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r.ri/T.Y  Of  TIU  GHAUUAU  SCHOOL 


-mm  imi  mm 


To  Professor  Henri  Bergson 
With    respect    and    gratitude 


HARVARD  UNIVERSITY 
LIB'^ARY 

SbP  1  7  1991 


The  Misuse  of  Mind 


The  Misuse  of  Mind 

A      Stud^'     of     l-Jergson's 
Attack  on    Int<llcctua!isn-i 


By 

KAllIN     STEPHEN 

ForDicrly    h'ellow  of  h'cwiiltafn   Ci^llcKc.    Cavihridge 


With  a   Prefatory   Letter   by 

HENRI     BERGSON 


NEW     YORK 

HARCOUKT,     BRACl':     ct     COM]\ANV.     INC. 

LONDON  ;   KEGAN  PAUL,  TKENCfl,  TKUBNER  &  Co.,  Ltd. 

1922 


Intcrnalional    Library    ol    Psycholooy 
Philosophy     and     Scieniific     Method 

General  Editor      -     -     -     -     c.   k    Ogdkn,  m.a. 

(Magdalene  College,  Cambridge). 

VOLUMES    ALBKADY     AliUAhUED  : 

PHILOSOPHICAL    STUDIES 

by  G.   K.  Moore,  Lltt.D. 
CONKLICT    AND    DREAM 

61/  W.  H.   U.  RiVKKa,   E.r.a. 

THE    MEASUREMENT     OF    EMOTION 

by  W.  WnATiiLV  Smith 

Introduction  by   Willia-m  Urown. 
THE    ANALYSIS    OF    MATTER 

by  Bkutkani)  Rushell,   F.R.S. 
MATHEMATICS    FOR     PHILOSOPHERS 

by  a.  H.   Hardy,   F.R.S. 
PSYCHOLOniCAL    TYPES 

by  C.  a.  Juno.  M.D..  LL.D. 
THE    PSYCHOLOGY     OF    REASONING 

by    El'OENlO     RlONANO 

THE    ELEMENTS  OF  PSYCHOTHERAPY 

by  William  Urown,  M.D.,  D.So. 
THE    PHILOSOPHY    OF    THE    UNCONSCIOU.S 

by  E.  vo.N  Uartman.s 

THE    FOI'NDATIONS    OF    MUSICAL    AESTHETICS 
by  W.   PouK.    I'.R.S. 

JSdited  by  hdwurd  J.   Dent. 

THE    PSYCHOLOGY    OF    MUSIC 
by  Edwaud  J.  Dent 

SOME    CONCEPTS    OF    SCIENTIFIC    THOUGHT 
by  C.  D.   Broad,  Lltt.D. 

PHILOSOPHICAL    LOGIC 

by    L.    WlTTOKNSTEIN 

Introduction  by  liertrand  Rusaell. 
THE    PHILOSOPHY    OF    '  AS    IF 

by  H.  Vaihinoer 
THE    LAWS    OF    FEELING 

by  F.  Pauliian 

THE    HISTORY    OF    MATERIALISM 
by  F.   A.  Lanqe 

COLOUR-HARMONY 

by  James  Wood  and  C.  K.   Ooden 

THE    STATISTICAL     METHOD     IN     ECONOMICS 
AND     POLITICS 
by  P.  Saroant  Fi.ore.\'ce 

THE    PRINCIPLES    OF    CRITICISM 
by  I.  A.  RICHARD.I 


CHAT 

CONTENTS 

PAGE 

Prefatory  Note 

7 

Preface    .... 

9 

I. 

Explanation     . 

15 

II. 

Fact          .... 

•       47 

III. 

Matter  and  Memory 

•       75 

PREFATORY    NOTE 

Betfig  an   extract  J>otn  a  letter  by  Projessor  lloni  BergfiOtt 

Ayant  lu  de  pres  le  travail  de  Mrs.  Stephen 
je  le  trouve  interessant  au  plus  haut  point. 
C'est  une  interpretation  personelle  et  originale 
de  I'ensemble  de  mes  vues — interpretation  qui 
vaut  par  elle-meme,  independamment  de  cc 
qui  j'  ai  ecrit.  L'auteur  s'est  assimile  I' esprit 
(le  la  doctrine,  puis,  se  degageant  de  la  materi- 
alite  du  texle  elle  a  developpe  a  sa  manierc, 
dans  la  direction  qu'elle  avait  choisi,  des  idees 
qui  lui  paraissaient  fundamentales.  Grace  a 
la  distinction  qu'elle  etablit  entre  "  fact  "  et 
"  matter,"  elle  a  pu  ramener  a  I'unite,  et 
presenter  avec  une  grande  rigueur  logique,  des 
vues  que  j 'avals  etc  oblige,  en  raison  de  ma 
methode  de  recherche,  d'isoler  les  unes  des 
autres.  Bref,  son  travail  a  une  grande  valeur  ; 
il  temoigne  d'une  rare  force  de  pensee. 

HENRI    BERGSON. 


PREFACE 

The  immense  popularity  which  Bergson's 
philosophy  enjoys  is  sometimes  cast  up  against 
him.  by  those  who  do  not  agree  with  him,  as 
a  reproach.  It  has  been  suggested  that  Berg- 
son's writings  are  welcomed  simply  because 
they  offer  a  theoretical  justification  for  a 
tendency  which  is  natural  in  all  of  us  but 
against  which  philosophy  has  always  fought, 
the  tendency  to  throw  reason  overboard  and 
just  let  ourselves  go.  Bergson  is  regarded 
by  rationalists  almost  as  a  traitor  to  philoso- 
phy, or  as  a  Bolshevik  inciting  the  public  to 
overthrow  what  it  has  taken  years  of  painful 
effort  to  build  up. 

It  is  possible  that  some  people  who  do  not 
understand  this  philosophy  may  use  Bergson's 
name  as  a  cloak  for  giving  up  all  self-direction 
and  letting  themselves  go  intellectually  to 
pieces,  just  as  hooligans  may  use  a  time  of 
revolution  to  plunder  in  the  name  of  the  Red 
Guard.  But  Bergson's  philosophj^  is  in  reality 
as  far  from  teaching  mere  laziness  as  Com- 
munism is  from  being  mere  destruction  of  the 
old  social  order. 


Mil';    IMISUSIC    Ol'     MINI) 

Bcrgson  attacks  the  use  to  which  we  usually 
put  our  minds,  but  he  most  certainly  does  not 
suggest  that  a  philosopher  should  not  use 
his  mind  at  all  ;  he  is  to  use  it  for  all  it  is 
worth,  only  differently,  more  efficiently  for  the 
purpose  he  has  in  view,  the  purpose  of  knowing 
for  its  own  sake. 

There  is,  of  course,  a  sense  in  which  doing 
anything  in  the  right  way  is  simply  letting 
one's  self  go,  for  after  all  it  is  easier  to  do  a 
thing  well  than  badly — it  certainly  takes  much 
less  effort  to  produce  the  same  amount  of 
result.  So  to  know  in  the  way  which  Bergson 
recommends  does  in  a  sense  come  more  easily 
than  attempting  to  get  the  knowledge  we  want 
by  inappropriate  methods.  If  this  saving  of 
waste  effort  is  a  fault,  then  Bergson  must 
plead  guilty.  But  as  the  field  of  knowledge 
open  to  us  is  far  too  wide  for  any  one  mind  to 
explore,  the  new  method  of  knowing,  though  it 
requires  less  effort  than  the  old  to  produce  the 
same  result,  does  not  thereby  let  us  off  more 
easily,  for  with  a  better  instrument  it  becomes 
possible  to  work  for  a  greater  result. 

It  is  not  because  it  affords  an  excuse  for 
laziness  that  Bergson's  philosophy  is  popular 
but  because  it  gives  expression  to  a  feeling 
which  is  very  widespread  at  the  present  time, 
a  distrust  of  systems,  theories,  logical  con- 
structions, the  assumption  of  premisses  and 
then  the  acceptance  of  everything  that  follows 
logically  from  them.     There  is  a  sense  of  im- 


PRIvFACK 

patience  with  thouglit  and  a  thirst  for  tlic 
actual,  the  concrete.  It  is  because  tiie  whole 
drift  of  Bcrgson's  writing  is  an  incitement  to 
throw  over  abstractions  and  get  back  to  facts 
that  so  many  people  read  him,  hoping  that 
he  will  put  into  words  and  find  an  answer  to 
the  unformulated  doubt  that  haunts  them. 

It  was  in  this  spirit  that  the  writer  under- 
took the  study  of  Bergson.  On  the  first 
reading  he  appeared  at  once  too  persuasive 
and  too  vague,  specious  and  unsatisfying  :  a 
closer  investigation  revealed  more  and  more  a 
coherent  theory  of  reality  and  a  new  and 
promising  method  of  investigating  it.  The 
apparent  unsatisfactoriness  of  the  first  reading 
arose  from  a  failure  to  realize  how  entirely 
new  and  unfamiliar  the  point  of  view  is  from 
which  Bergson  approaches  metaphysical  specu- 
lation. In  order  to  understand  Bergson  it  is 
necessary  to  adopt  his  attitude  and  that  is  just 
the  difficulty,  for  his  attitude  is  the  exact 
reverse  of  that  which  has  been  inculcated  in 
us  by  the  traditions  of  our  language  and 
education  and  now  comes  to  us  naturally. 
This  common  sense  attitude  is  based  on  certain 
assumptions  which  are  so  familiar  that  we 
simply  take  them  for  granted  without  ex- 
pressly formulating  them,  and  indeed,  for 
the  most  part,  without  even  realizing  that 
we  have  been  making  any  assumptions  at  all. 

Bergson 's  principal  aim  is  to  direct  our 
attention  to  the  reality  which  he  believes  we 


THE    MISUSE    OF    MIND 

all  actually  know  already,  but  misinterpret 
and  disregard  because  we  are  biassed  by  pre- 
conceived ideas.  To  do  this  Bergson  has  to 
offer  some  description  of  what  this  reality  is, 
and  this  description  will  be  intelligible  only 
if  we  are  willing  and  able  to  make  a  profound 
change  in  our  attitude,  to  lay  aside  the  old 
assumptions  which  underlie  our  every  day 
common  sense  point  of  view  and  adopt,  at 
least  for  the  time  being,  the  assumptions  from 
which  Bergson  sets  out.  This  book  begins 
with  an  attempt  to  give  as  precise  an  account 
as  possible  of  the  old  assumptions  which  we 
must  discard  and  the  new  ones  which  we  must 
adopt  in  order  to  understand  Bergson's  descrip- 
tion of  reahty.  To  make  the  complete  re- 
versal of  our  ordinary  mental  habits  needed 
for  understanding  what  Bergson  has  to  say 
requires  a  very  considerable  effort  from  any- 
one, but  the  feat  is  perhaps  most  difficult  of 
all  for  those  who  have  carefully  trained  them- 
selves in  habits  of  rigorous  logical  criticism. 
In  attempting  to  describe  what  we  actually 
Icnbw'irfthe  alsstract  logical  terms  wliich  are 
the  only  means  of  intercommunication  that 
human  beings  possess,  Bergson  is  driven 
into  perpetual  self-contradiction,  indeed,  para- 
doxical though  it  may  sound,  unless  he  con- 
tradicted himself  his  description  could  not  be 
a  true  one.  It  is  easier  for  the  ordinary  reader 
to  pass  over  the  self  contradictions,  hardly 
even  being  aware  of  them,  and  grasp  the  under- 


I'KKI-ACir 
lying  mraiiing:  iIk-  trained  logician  is  at 
once  pulled  up  by  the  nonsensical  form  of  the 
description  and  the  meaning  is  lost  in  a  welter 
of  conflicting  words.  This,  I  think,  is  the  real 
reason  why  some  of  the  most  brilliant  intellec- 
tual thinkers  have  been  able  to  make  nothing 
of  Lergson  s  philosophy  :  baffled  by  the  self 
contradictions  into  which  he  is  necessarily 
driven  in  the  attempt  to  convey  his  meaning 
they  have  hastily  assumed  that  Bergson  had 
no  meaning  to  convey. 

The  object  of  this'  book  is  to  set  out  the 
relation  between  explanations  and  the  actual 
facts  which  we  want  to  explain  and  thereby 
to  show  exactly  why  Bergson  must  use  self- 
contradictory  terms  if  the  explanation  of 
reality  which  he  offers  is  to  be  a  true  one 

Having  first  shown  what  attitude  Bergson 

w?"/T  '?/"  f^'^t  ^  ''^^'^  fe'""^^  «"  to  describe 
uhat  he  thinks  this  new  way  of  looking  at 
leahty  will  reveal.  This  at  once  involves 
me  in  the  difficulty  with  which  Bergson 
wrestles  in  all  his  attempts  to  describe  reality 
the  difficulty  which  arises  from  the  funda- 
mental discrepancy  between  what  he  sees  the 

v'vhVeh  "''i/r  ^'  "^^^  ^^^^  abstract  notions 
which  are  all  he  has  with  which  to  describe  it 
I  have  attempted  to  show  how  it  comes  about 
that  we  are  m  fact  able  to  perform  this 
apparently  impossible  feat  of  describing  the 
ndescnbable,  using  Bergson's  descriptions  of 
sensible  perception  and  the  relations  of  matter 


THK    MISUSE    OF    MIND 

and  memory  to  illustrate  my  point.  If  we 
succeed  in  ridding  ourselves  of  our  common- 
sense  preconceptions,  Bergson  tells  us  that  we 
may  expect  to  know  the  old  facts  in  a  new 
way,  face  to  face,  as  it  were,  instead  of  seeing 
them  through  a  web  of  our  own  intellectual 
interpretations.  I  have  not  attempted  to 
offer  any  proof  whether  or  not  Bergson's 
description  of  reahty  is  in  fact  true  :  having 
understood  the  meaning  of  the  description  it 
remains  for  each  of  us  to  decide  for  himself 
whether  or  not  it  fits  the  facts. 

KARIN    STEPHEN. 
Cambridge,  January,  1922. 


T4 


CHAPTER    I 

EXPLANATION 

In  order  to  understand  Bergson  it  is  not 
necessary  to  have  any  previous  acquaintance 
with  philosophy,  indeed  the  less  the  reader 
knows  of  current  metaphysical  notions  the 
easier  it  may  jierhaps  be  for  him  to  adopt  the 
mental  attitude  required  for  understanding 
Bergson.  For  Bergson  says  that  the  tradition 
of  philosophy  is  all  wrong  and  must  be  broken 
with  :  according  to  his  view  philosophical 
knowledge  can  only  be  obtained  by  "a 
reversal  of  the  usual  work  of  tlie  intellect."* 
The  usual  work  of  the  intellect  consists  in 
analysis  and  classification  :  if  you  have  any- 
thing presented  to  you  which  you  do  not 
understand  the  obvious  question  to  put  your- 
self is,  "  what  is  it  ?  "  Sup]~'()se  in  a  dark 
room  which  you  expected  to  find  empty  you 
stumble  against  something,  the  natural  tiling 
to  do  is  to  begin  at  once  to  try  to  fit  your 
experience  into  some  class  already  familiar 
to  you.  You  find  it  has  a  certain  texture 
which  you  class  as  rather  rough,  a  temperature 

*  Itilroiiuchon  to  Meluphysics,    page   3.1. 

15  B 


THE    MISUSE    OF    MIND 

which  you  class  as  warm,  a  size  which  you 
class  as  about  two  feet  high,  a  peculiar  smell 
which  you  recognise  and  you  finally  jump 
to  the  answer  to  your  question  :  it  is  "  a  dog." 
This  intellectual  operation  is  a  sample  of  the 
way  in  which  it  comes  natural  to  us  to  set  to 
work  whenever  we  find  ourselves  confronted 
with  any  situation  which  we  are  not  able  to 
classify  off  hand,  we  are  not  easy  till  we  can 
say  what  the  situation  is,  and  sa^dng  what 
consists  in  hitting  upon  some  class  with  which 
we  are  already  familiar  to  which  it  belongs  : 
in  this  instance  the  question  was  answered 
when  you  succeeded  in  describing  the  situation 
to  yourself  as  "  stumbling  upon  a  dog."  Now 
you  were  only  able  to  class  what  was  stumbled 
upon  as  a  dog  after  you  had  recognised  a  cer- 
tain number  of  properties  as  being  those 
shared  by  dogs — the  rough  texture,  the  size, 
the  smell.  You  analysed  the  situation  as  con- 
taining these  qualities  and  thereupon  classified 
what  had  been  stumbled  upon  as  a  dog. 

Analysis  and  classification  are  the  two 
methods  which  we  are  accustomed  to  rely 
upon  for  improving  our  knowledge  in  un- 
familiar situations  and  we  are  accustomed 
to  take  it  that  they  improve  our  knowledge 
of  the  whole  situation  :  anyone  who  said  that 
after  you  were  able  to  say  wliat  you  had 
stumbled  upon  you  knew  less  of  the  whole 
situation  than  you  knew  before  would  find  it 
difficult  to  get  you  to  agree.  And  yet  this  is 
i6 


EXPLANATION 

very  much  the  position  which  Bcrgson  takes 
up.  Analysis  and  classification,  he  would 
admit,  are  the  way  to  get  more  knowledge, 
of  a  kind  ;  they  enable  us  to  describe  situa- 
tions and  they  are  the  starting  point  of  all 
explanation  and  prediction.  After  analysis 
and  classification  you  were  able  to  say,  "  I 
have  stumbled  upon  a  dog,"  and  having  got 
so  far  you  could  then  pass  on  to  whatever 
general  laws  you  knew  of  as  applying  to  the 
classes  into  which  you  had  fitted  the  situation, 
and  by  means  of  these  laws  still  more  of  the 
situation  could  be  classified  and  explained. 
Thus  by  means  of  the  general  law,  "  dogs 
lick,"  you  would  be  furnished  with  an  explana- 
tion if  i)erl!aps  you  felt  something  warm  and 
damp  on  your  hand,  or  again  knowledge  of  this 
law  might  lead  you  to  expect  such  a  feeling. 
When  what  we  want  is  to  describe  or  to 
explain  a  situation  in  general  terms  then 
Bergson  agrees  that  analysis  and  classification 
are  the  methods  to  employ,  but  he  maintains 
that  these  methods  which  are  useful  for 
describing  and  explaining  are  no  use  for  hnding 
out  the  actual  situation  which  we  may  want 
to  describe  or  explain.  And  he  goes  a  step 
further.  Not  only  do  these  methods  fail  to 
reveal  the  situation  but  the  intellectual  atti- 
tude of  abstraction  to  which  they  accustom 
us  seriously  handicaps  us  when  we  want  not 
merely  to  explain  the  situation  but  to  know 
it.      Now    it    is    the    business   of   science    to 

17 


THE    MISUSE    0\'    MIND 

explain  situations  in  terms  of  general  laws  and 
so  the  intellectual  method  of  abstraction  is  the 
right  one  for  scientists  to  employ.  Bergson 
claims,  however,  that  philosophy  has  a  task 
quite  distinct  from  that  of  science.  In  what- 
ever situation  he  finds  himself  a  man  may  take 
up  one  of  two  attitudes,  he  may  either  adopt 
a  practical  attitude,  in  which  case  he  will  set 
to  work  to  explain  the  situation  in  order  that 
he  may  know  what  to  do  under  the  circum- 
stances, or  he  may  take  a  speculative  interest 
in  it  and  then  he  will  devote  himself  to  know- 
ing it  simply  for  the  sake  of  knowing.  It  is 
only,  according  to  Bergson,  in  the  former  case, 
when  his  interest  is  practical,  that  he  will 
attain  his  object  by  using  the  intellectual 
method  of  abstraction  which  proceeds  by 
analysis  and  classification.  These  intellectual 
operations  have  such  prestige,  however,  they 
have  proved  so  successful  in  discovering 
explanations,  that  we  are  apt  to  take  it  for 
granted  that  they  must  be  the  best  way  to  set 
to  work  whatever  sort  of  knowledge  we  want  : 
we  might  almost  be  tempted,  off  hand,  to 
imagine  that  they  were  our  only  way  of  know- 
ing at  all,  but  a  moment's  reflection  will  show 
that  this,  at  any  rate,  would  be  going  too  far. 
Before  we  can  analyse  and  classify  and 
explain  we  must  have  something  to  analyse, 
some  material  to  work  upon  :  these  operations 
are  based  upon  something  which  we  know 
directly,  what  we  see,  for  instance,  or  touch 
i8 


I'Xl'l  ANA  HON 

or  foel.  Tliis  sniiicthing  is  tlir  foundation  of 
knowledge,  tlir  intellect u;d  oiieiations  of  an- 
alysis classilication  and  the  framing  of  general 
laws  are  simply  an  attempt  to  describe  and 
explain  it.  It  is  the  business  of  science  to 
explain  and  intellectual  methods  arc  the 
appropriate  ones  for  science  to  employ.  But 
the  business  of  philosophy,  according  to 
Bergson,  is  not  to  explain  reality  but  to  know 
it.  For  this  a  different  kind  of  mental  effort 
is  required.  Analysis  and  classification,  in- 
stead of  increasing  our  direct  knowUnlge,  tend 
rather  to  diminish  it.  They  must  always  start 
from  some  direct  knowledge,  but  they  proceed, 
not  by  widening  the  field  of  this  knowledge  but 
by  leaving  out  more  and  more  of  it.  More- 
over, unless  we  are  constantly  on  the  alert, 
the  intellectual  habit  of  using  all  our  direct 
knowledge  as  material  for  analysis  and  classifi- 
cation ends  by  completely  misleading  us  as  to 
what  it  is  that  we  do  actually  know.  So  that 
the  better  we  explain  the  less,  in  the  end,  we 
know. 

There  can  be  no  doubt  that  something  is 
directly  known  but  disputes  break  out  as  soon 
as  we  try  to  say  what  that  something  is.  Is 
it  the  '*  real  "  world  of  material  objects,  or 
a  mental  copy  of  these  objects,  or  are  we 
altogether  on  the  wrong  track  in  looking  for 
two  kinds  of  realities,  the  "  real  "  world  and 
"  our  mental  states,"  and  is  it  perceived  events 
alone     that     are     "  real  ?  "     This    something 

19 


Till':    MISUSR    f)F    MIND 

which  we  know  dircxtly  has  been  given  various 
names:  "the  external  object,"  "sense  data," 
"  phenomena,"  and  so  on,  each  more  or  less 
coloured  by  implications  belonging  to  one  or 
other  of  the  rival  theories  as  to  what  it  is. 
We  shall  call  it  "  the  facts"  to  emphasise 
its  indubitable  reality,  and  avoid,  as  far  as 
possible,  any  other  implications. 

Controversy  about  "  the  facts  "  has  been 
mainly  as  to  what  position  they  occupy  in  the 
total  scheme  of  reality.  As  to  what  they  are 
at  the  moment  when  we  are  actually  being 
acquainted  with  them  one  would  have  thought 
there  could  have  been  no  two  opinions  ;  it 
seems  impossible  that  we  should  make  any 
mistake  about  that.  No  doubt  it  is  impossible 
to  have  such  a  thing  as  a  false  experience,  an 
experience  is  what  it  is,  only  judgments  can 
be  false.  But  it  is  quite  possible  to  make  a 
false  judgment  as  to  what  experience  we  are 
actually  having,  or,  still  more  commonly, 
simply  to  take  for  granted  that  our  experience 
must  be  such  and  such,  without  ever  looking 
to  see  whether  it  is  or  not.  A  small  child 
taken  to  a  party  and  told  that  parties  are 
great  fun  if  questioned  afterwards  will  very 
hkcly  say  it  has  enjoyed  itself  though,  if  you 
happened  to  have  been  there,  you  may  have 
seen  clearly  that  it  was  really  bewildered  or 
bored.  Even  when  we  grow  up  names  still 
have  a  tendency  to  impose  upon  us  and  dis- 
guise from  us  the  actual  nature  of  our  experi- 

20 


EXPLANATION 

ences.  There  are  not  very  many  peopK'  who, 
if  invited  to  partake,  for  instance,  of  tlie  last 
bottle  of  some  famous  vintage  wine,  wrmld 
have  the  courage  to  admit,  even  to  themselves, 
that  it  was  nasty,  even  though  it  was,  in  fact, 
considerably  past  its  prime.  Cases  of  this 
kind,  with  which  we  are  all  familiar,  are 
enough  to  make  us  realize  that  it  is  actually 
quite  possible  to  make  mistakes  even  about 
facts  which  we  know  directly,  to  overlook  the 
actual  fact  altogether  because  we  have  made 
up  our  minds  in  advance  as  to  what  it  is  sure 
to  be. 

Now  Bergson  says  that  such  errors  are  not 
confined  to  stray  instances,  such  as  we  have 
noticed,  in  which  the  imposition  of  pre- 
conceived ideas  can  readily  be  detected  by  a 
little  closer  attention  to  the  actual  facts.  He 
believes  that  a  falsification  due  to  preconceived 
ideas,  runs  right  through  the  whole  of  our 
direct  experience.  He  lays  the  blame  botli 
for  this  falsification  and  for  our  failure  to 
detect  it  upon  our  intellectual  habit  of  relying 
upon  explanation  rather  than  u})on  direct 
knowledge,  and  that  is  one  of  the  reasons  why 
he  says  that  our  intellectual  attitude  is  an 
obstacle  to  direct  knowledge  of  the  facts.  The 
intellectual  method  of  abstraction  by  which 
we  analyse  and  classify  is  the  foundation  of 
all  description  and  explanation  in  terms  of 
general  laws,  and  the  truth  is  that  we  are,  as 
a  rule,  much  more  preoccupied  with  ex})laining 


THE    MISUSI-:    Ol'     MIND 

the  facts  which  we  know  tli;in  with  the  actual 
experiencing   of   them. 

This  preoccupation  is  natural  enough.  The 
bare  fact  which  we  know  directly  is  not 
enough  to  enable  us  to  carry  on  our  everyday 
lives,  we  cannot  get  on  unless  we  supplement 
it  with  some  sort  of  exj)lanation  and,  if  it 
comes  to  choosing  between  fact  and  ex- 
planation, the  explanation  is  often  of  more 
practical  use  than  the  fact.  So  it  comes 
about  that  we  are  inclined  to  use  the  facts 
which  we  know  directly  simply  as  material 
for  constructing  explanations  and  to  pay  so 
little  attention  to  them  for  their  own  sakes 
that  we  simply  take  it  for  granted  that  they 
must  be  what  our  explanations  lead  us  to 
suppose  they  are. 

Now  according  to  Bergson  the  attitude  of 
mind  required  for  explaining  the  facts  con- 
flicts with  that  which  is  required  for  knowing 
them.  From  the  point  of  view  simply  of 
knowing,  the  facts  are  all  equally  important 
and  we  cannot  afford  to  discriminate,  but  for 
explanation  some  facts  are  very  much  more 
important  than  others.  When  we  want  to 
explain,  therefore,  rather  than  simply  to 
know,  we  tend  to  concentrate  our  attention 
upon  these  practically  important  facts  and 
pass  over  the  rest.  For  in  order  to  describe 
and  explain  a  situation  we  have  to  classify  it, 
and  in  order  to  do  this  we  must  pick  out  in  it 
properties  required  for  membership  of  some 


EXl'I  ANATION 

one  or  other  of  the  classes  known  to  us.  In 
the  situation  which  we  originally  considered 
by  way  of  illustration,  for  instance,  you  had 
to  pick  out  the  qualities  of  roughness,  warmth 
and  so  on,  in  order  to  classify  what  you  had 
stumbled  ujjon  as  "  a  dog."  Now  the  picking 
out  of  these  particular  qualities  is  really  an 
operation  of  abstraction  from  tlie  situation 
as  a  whole  :  they  were  the  important  features 
of  the  situation  from  the  point  of  view  of 
classifying  what  you  had  stumbled  upon,  but 
they  by  no  means  exhausted  the  whole 
situation.  Our  preoccupation  with  explaining 
the  facts,  then,  leads  us  to  treat  what  we  know 
directly  as  so  much  material  for  abstraction. 
This  intellectual  attitude,  as  Bergson  calls 
it,  though  practically  useful,  has,  according 
to  him,  two  grave  drawbacks  from  the  point 
of  view  of  speculation.  By  focussing  our 
attention  upon  anything  less  than  the  whole 
fact,  and  so  isolating  a  part  from  the  rest, 
he  says  we  distort  what  we  kncw^  originally  : 
furthermore  just  in  so  far  as  we  make  a  selec- 
tion among  the  facts,  attending  to  some  and 
passing  over  others,  we  limit  the  held  of  direct 
knowledge  which  we  might  otherwise  have 
enjoyed.  For  these  two  reasons  Bergson 
insists  that  it  is  the  business  of  philosophy  to 
reverse  the  intellectual  habit  of  mind  and 
return  to  the  fullest  possible  direct  knowledge 
of  the  fact.  "  May  not  the  task  of  philoso- 
phy," he  says,  "  be  to  bring  us  back  to  a  fuller 


TIIK    MISUSE    OF    MIND 

perception  of  reality  by  a  certain  displacement 
of  our  attention  ?  What  would  be  required 
would  be  to  turn  our  attention  azvay  from  the 
practically  interesting  aspect  of  the  universe 
in  order  to  turn  it  back  to  what,  from  a  practi- 
cal point  of  view,  is  useless.  And  this  conver- 
sion of  attention  would  be  philosophy  itself."* 
At  first  sight  it  appears  paradoxical  and 
absurd  to  maintain  that  our  efforts  to  analyse, 
classify  and  explain  the  facts  tend  rather  to 
limit  than  to  extend  our  knowledge,  and 
furthermore  distort  even  such  facts  as  we  still 
remain  acquainted  with.  Common  sense  has 
no  doubt  that,  far  from  limiting  and  distorting 
our  knowledge,  explanation  is  the  only  possible 
way  in  which  we  can  get  beyond  the  little 
scraps  of  fact  which  are  all  that  we  can  ever 
know  directly. 

If  the  views  of  common  sense  on  this  ques- 
tion were  formulated,  which,  for  the  most 
part,  they  are  not,  they  would  be  something 
like  this.  Until  we  begin  to  think  the  facts 
which  we  know  directly  are  all  muddled 
together  and  confused  :  first  of  all  it  is  neces- 
sary to  sort  them  by  picking  out  qualities  from 
the  general  confusion  in  which  they  are  at  first 
concealed.  It  is  possible  that  during  this 
process,  which  is  what  is  called  analysis,  we 
may  be  obliged,  at  first,  to  overlook  some  of 
what  we  already  know  in  a  vague  sort  of  way, 
but  this  insignificant  loss  is  compensated  by 

*  La   Perception  du   Changemevt,  page  13 
24 


I'.xpi.ana'hon 

the  cl.iril  \'  of  w  li;it  1  (  iiiiiiiis,  .iiid  is,  in  any  caso, 
only  Lcinijoicuy.  1m ir  ;is  tlu'  analysis  pro- 
ceeds wc  p;ra(lually  replace  the  whole  of  the 
original  mere  muddle  by  clear  and  definite 
things  and  qualities.  At  first  we  may  be  able 
to  distinguisli  only  a  few  qualities  here  and 
there,  and  our  preoccupation  with  these  may 
possibly  lead  us,  for  a  time,  to  pay  insufficient 
attention  to  the  rest  of  the  muddle  whicli  we 
know  directly  but  have  not  yet  succeeded  in 
analysing.  I3ut  when  the  analysis  is  com- 
pleted the  distinct  things  and  qualities  which 
we  shall  then  know  will  contain  all  that  we 
originally  knew,  and  more  besides,  since  the 
analysis  will  have  revealed  much  that  was 
originally  concealed  or  only  implicit  in  the 
original  unanalysed  fact.  If,  for  instance,  you 
look  at  a  very  modern  painting,  at  first  what 
you  are  directly  aware  of  may  be  little  more 
than  a  confused  sight  :  bye  and  bye,  as  you 
go  on  looking,  you  will  be  able  to  distinguish 
colours  and  shapes,  one  by  one  objects  may  be 
recognised  until  finally  you  may  be  able  to 
sec  the  whole  picture  at  a  glance  as  composed 
of  four  or  five  different  colours  arranged  in 
definite  shapes  and  positions.  You  may  even 
be  able  to  make  out  that  it  represents  a 
human  figure,  or  a  landscape.  Common  sense 
would  tell  you  that  if  your  analysis  is  cf)mplete 
tliese  colours  and  shapes  will  exhaust  the 
whole  of  what  you  originally  knew  and  more- 
over that  in  the  course  of  it  much  will  Iiave 

25 


Till'.    MISl'SK    01-     MINI) 

been  discovered  which  originally  you  could 
hardly  be  said  to  have  known  at  all,  so  that 
analysis,  far  from  limiting  your  direct  know- 
ledge, will  have  added  to  it  considerably. 
Starting,  then,  originally,  from  a  very  meagre 
stock  of  direct  knowledge,  analysis,  according 
to  the  common  sense  view,  by  discovering 
more  and  more  qualities,  builds  up  for  us 
more  and  more  direct  knowledge. 

Bergson  begins  just  the  other  way  up. 
He  starts  from  the  idea  of  a  whole  field  of 
direct  knowledge  vastly  more  extended  than 
the  actual  facts  of  which  we  are  normally 
aware  as  making  up  our  direct  experience. 
He  calls  this  whole  field  of  knowledge  "  virtual 
knowledge."  This  field  of  virtual  knoM'ledge 
contains  the  whole  of  the  actions  and  reactions 
of  matter  in  which  our  body  has  its  part  at  any 
moment,  the  multitude  of  stimulations  which 
actually  assail  the  senses  but  which  we  nor- 
mally disregard,  together  with  all  the  responses 
by  which  our  bodies  adjust  themselves  to  these 
stimulations,  and,  in  addition,  the  whole  of  our 
past.  For  Bergson  the  problem  is  to  explain, 
not  how  we  increase  our  direct  knowledge, 
but  how  we  limit  it  :  not  how  we  remember, 
but  how  we  forget.  "  Our  knowledge,"  he 
says,  "  far  from  being  built  up  by  a  gradual 
combination  of  simple  elements,  is  the  result 
of  a  sharp  dissociation.  I^rom  the  infinitely 
vast  field  of  our  virtual  knowledge  we  have 
selected,    to    turn     into    actual     knowledge. 


i:xri.ANATinN 

whatever  concerns  om-  actiim  \iiK)n  things; 
the  rest  we  have  neglected.  1  lu'  brain  apjK'ars 
to  have  been  constructed  on  purpose  for  this 
work  of  selection.  It  is  easj'  enough  to  show 
that  this  is  so  in  the  case  of  memory.  Our 
past,  as  we  shall  show  in  the  next  lecture,  is 
necessarily  preserved,  automatically.  It  sur- 
vives in  its  entirety.  But  it  is  to  our  practical 
interest  to  put  it  aside,  or  at  any  rate  only  to 
accept  just  so  much  of  it  as  can  more  or  less 
usefully  throw  hght  on  the  present  situation 
and  complete  it.  The  brain  enables  us  to 
make  this  selection  :  it  materialises  the  useful 
memories  and  keeps  those  which  would  be  of 
no  use  below  the  threshold  of  consciousness. 
The  same  thing  may  be  said  of  perception  : 
perception  is  the  servant  of  action  and  out  of 
the  whole  of  reality  it  isolates  only  what 
interests  us  ;  it  shows  us  not  so  much  the 
things  themselves  as  what  we  can  make  of 
them.  In  advance  it  classifies  them,  in 
advance  it  arranges  them  ;  we  ban^ly  look  at 
the  object,  it  is  enough  for  us  to  know  to  what 
category  it  belongs."* 

According  to  Bergson  the  facts  which  we 
actually  know  directly  in  the  ordinary  course 
are  discriminated  out  of  a  very  much  wider 
field  which  we  must  also  be  said  in  a  sense  to 
know  directly  though  most  of  it  lies  outside 
the  clear  focus  of  attention.  Tliis  whole  field 
of  virtual  knowledge  is  regarded  as  standing 

*  La   Peiceplwn  da   CItangenient,    jxiges   12  :ind   13 
27 


THE    MISUSI-:    OI'     MINI) 

to  the  actual  facts  to  which  we  usually  devote 
our  attention,  much  as,  for  instance,  the  whole 
situation  of  stumbling  upon  something  in  a 
dark  room  stood  to  the  single  quality  of 
roughness  :  in  both  cases  there  is  a  central 
point  in  the  full  focus  of  attention  which  we 
are  apt  to  look  upon  as  the  fact  directly 
known,  but  this  central  point  is  really  sur- 
rounded by  a  vastly  wider  context  and  this 
too  is  known  in  some  sense  tliough  it  is  com- 
monly ignored. 

For  all  philosophies,  whether  they  be 
Bergson's  or  the  view  of  common  sense  or  any 
other,  the  actual  facts  which  require  to  be 
explained  are  the  same,  and,  though  any 
positive  assertion  as  to  what  these  facts  are 
may  be  hotly  disputed,  it  will  probably  be 
admitted  that  as  we  ordinarily  know  them 
they  consist  in  some  direct  experience,  un- 
deniable as  far  as  it  goes.  The  point  at  issue 
between  Bergson  and  common  sense  is,  pre- 
cisely, how  far  it  does  go.  Both  sides  would 
admit  that,  in  this  fact  directly  known,  what 
is  in  the  full  focus  of  attention  at  any  given 
moment  is  verj'  limited  ;  on  the  other  hand 
both  would  admit  that  this  fully  focussed  fact 
is  set  in  a  context,  or  fringe,  with  no  clearly 
defined  Umits  which  also  goes  to  make  up  the 
whole  fact  directly  known  though  we  do  not 
usually  pay  much  attention  to  it.  The  fact 
directly  known  being  given  the  problem  is  to 
find  out  what  it  is  and  how  it  comes  to  be 
28 


r,Xr'LANATIOK 

known.  Wliat  is  actually  given  and  needs 
to  be  accounted  for  is  the  fact  clearly  focussed, 
with  its  less  clearly  defined  fringe  :  Bergson's 
sweeping  assumption  of  the  existence  of  a 
further  vast  field  of  virtual  knowledge  in  order 
to  account  for  it,  does,  at  first  sight,  seem 
arbitrary  and  unwarranted  antl  in  need  of  con- 
siderable justification  before  it  can  be  accepted. 
For  him  the  problem  then  becomes,  not  to 
account  for  our  knowing  as  much  as  we  do, 
but  to  see  why  it  is  that  we  do  not  know  a 
great  deal  more  :  why  our  actual  knowledge 
does  not  cover  the  whole  field  of  our  virtual 
knowledge.  Common  sense,  on  the  other 
hand,  sets  out  from  the  assumption  of  ignor- 
ance, absence  of  awareness,  as  being,  as  it  were, 
natural  and  not  needing  any  accounting  for, 
and  so  it  regards  the  problem  as  being  to 
explain  why  any  experience  ever  occurs  at  all. 
The  assumj)tion  of  ignorance  as  being  the 
natural  thing  seems  at  first  sight  to  need  no 
justification,  but  this  may  well  be  due  merely 
to  our  having  grown  accustomed  to  the  com- 
mon sense  point  of  view.  When  one  begins 
to  question  this  assumption  it  begins  to 
appear  just  as  arbitrary  as  the  contrary  stand- 
point adopted  by  Bergson.  The  actual  facts 
are  neither  ignorance  nor  full  knowledge  and 
in  accounting  for  them  it  is  really  just  as 
arbitrary  to  assume  one  of  these  two  extremes 
as  the  other.  The  truth  appears  to  be  that 
in  order  to  account  for  the  facts  one  must 
make  some  assumptions,  and  these,  not  being 
29 


TIIK    MISUSE    OF    MIND 

facts  actually  given,  arc  bound  to  be  more  or 
less  arbitrary.  They  seem  more  or  less 
"  natural  "  according  as  we  are  more  or  less 
accustomed  to  the  idea  of  them,  but  they  are 
really  justified  only  according  to  the  success 
with  which  they  account  for  the  actual  facts. 

This  idea  of  putting  the  problem  of  know- 
ledge in  terms  exactly  the  reverse  of  those 
in  which  it  seems  "  natural  "  to  put  it  was 
originally  suggested  to  Bergson  by  his  study 
of  the  important  work  on  amnesia  carried  out 
by  Charcot  and  his  pupils,  and  also  by  such 
evidence  as  was  to  be  had  at  the  time  when 
he  wrote  on  the  curious  memory  phenomena 
revealed  by  the  use  of  hypnotism  and  by  cases 
of  spontaneous  dissociation.  It  is  impossible 
to  prove  experimentally  that  no  experience  is 
ever  destroyed  but  it  is  becoming  more  and 
more  firmly  established  that  enormous  num- 
bers of  past  experiences,  which  are  inaccessible 
to  ordinary  memory  and  which  therefore  it 
would  seem  "natural"  to  suppose  destroyed, 
can,  if  the  right  methods  are  employed,  be 
revived  even  with  amazing  fullness  of  detail. 

In  recent  years  since  Bergson's  books  were 
first  published,  great  strides  have  been  made 
in  the  experimental  investigation  of  the  whole 
subject  of  memory,  and  the  evidence  thus 
obtained,  far  from  upsetting  the  theory  of 
memory  suggested  to  him  by  the  less  extensive 
evidence  which  was  available  at  the  time  when 
he  wrote,  lends  it  striking  support. 

30 


IXri  ANA  rioN 

It  api^cnrs  to  be  ;icci'|itc(l  I>\-  diu  tup'^  ^\■ll(> 
use  hypnotism  in  psycliot  In  i  .i))\'  tli.it  uiidir 
hypnotism  many  ])atients  can  pcifcctly  well 
be  taken  back  in  memory  to  any  period  of 
their  hves  which  the  doctor  chooses  to  ask  for, 
and  can  be  made  not  only  to  remember 
vaguely  a  few  incidents  which  occurred  at  the 
time  but  actually  to  re-live  the  whole  period 
in  the  fullest  possible  detail,  feeling  over  again 
with  hallucinatory  vividness  all  the  emotions 
experienced  at  the  time. 

This  re-living  of  past  experience  can,  with 
some  patients,  be  made  to  go  on  indefinitely, 
through  the  whole  day,  if  the  doctor  has  time 
to  attend  to  it,  every  little  incident  being 
faithfully  recalled  though  the  actual  event 
may  have  taken  place  20  or  30  years  pre\i- 
ously.  And  this  happens  not  simply  in  the 
case  of  some  very  striking  event  or  great  crisis 
which  the  patient  has  been  through,  indeed 
it  is  just  the  striking  events  that  are  often 
hardest  to  recover.  Some  doctors,  in  order 
to  get  at  the  crisis,  have  found  it  useful  occa- 
sionally to  put  patients  back  through  one 
birthday  after  another  right  back  even  as 
early  as  their  second  year,  to  see  at  what  point 
in  their  lives  some  particular  nervous  symptom 
first  appeared,  and  each  successive  birthday 
is  lived  through  again  in  the  utmost  detail.* 

Evidence  of  this  kind  does  not,  of  course, 
prove  that  literally  nothing  is  e\'er  lost  but  it 

=!=See  P.'.ycholijgy  and  Psycliu/hoiif^y  li;    \)t    William  liroun 

'.  r  C 


THE    MISUSE    OF    MINI) 

goes  far  towards  upsetting  the  ordinary  view 
that  it  is  the  rule  for  past  experience  to  be 
annihilated  and  the  exception  for  fragments 
here  and  there  to  be  preserved  in  memory. 
The  evidence  which  has  so  far  been  collected 
and  which  is  rapidly  accumulating  at  least 
seems  to  justify  us  in  reversing  this  rule  and 
saying  rather  that  to  be  preserved  is  the  rule 
for  experience  and  to  be  lost  would  be  the 
exception,  if  indeed  any  experience  ever  really 
is  lost  at  all. 

This  way  of  regarding  the  field  of  memory 
is  further  supported  by  such  evidence  as  has 
been  collected  with  regard  to  the  influence  of 
past  experience  in  dreams,  phobias  and  various 
forms  of  insanity,  but  in  these  cases,  of  course, 
it  is  only  isolated  past  experiences  here  and 
there  whose  activity  can  be  observed,  and 
so,  while  helping  to  upset  the  most  natural 
assumption  that  whatever  cannot  be  recalled 
by  ordinary  efforts  of  memory  may  be 
assumed  to  have  been  destroyed,  they  do  not 
lend  very  much  support  to  the  wider  view 
put  forward  by  Bergson,  that  no  experience, 
however  trivial,  is  ever  destroyed  but  that  all 
of  it  is  included  in  the  field  out  of  which 
memory   makes   its   practical  selection. 

Taking  all  the  evidence  with  regard  to  the 
preservation  of  past  experience  which  is  at 
present  available,  then,  it  is  safe  to  say  that, 
while  it  cannot,  in  the  nature  of  things,  abso- 
lutely prove  Bergson 's  theory  of  knowledge, 


I'XPLANATION 

it  in  no  way  conflicts  with  i(  ;niil  inch  sup]),  iith 
it,  positively  in  tlie  souse  that  llif  tlucn  v  <loi  s 
fit  the  facts  well  enough  to  exjilain  them 
(though  it  goes  further  than  the  actual  facts 
and  makes  assumj)tions  which  can  neither  be 
]:)roved  nor  disj)roved  by  an  ai)peal  to  them) 
and  negatively  in  the  sense  that  \vh;it  we  iiuw 
know  about  memory  actually  conflicts  with 
the  "  natural  "  view  that  past  experience 
which  we  are  unable  to  recall  has  been 
destroj'^ed,  which  is  commonly  appealed  to  to 
show  the  absurdity  of  the  rival  theory  put 
forward  by  Bergson. 

On  the  assumption  which  Bergson  makes 
of  a  much  wider  field  of  direct  knowledge  than 
that  which  contains  what  we  are  accustomed 
to  regard  as  the  actual  facts  which  we  know 
directly,  Bergson 's  problem  becomes  how  to 
account  for  these  facts  being  so  much  less  than 
the  whole  field  which  we  might  have  expected 
to  have  known.  The  answer,  according  to 
him,  is  to  be  found  in  our  practical  need  cjf 
being  prepared  in  advance  for  what  is  to  come, 
at  whatever  sacrifice  of  direct  knowledge  of 
past  and  present  facts.  For  practical  i)ur- 
poses  it  is  essential  to  use  })resent  and  past 
facts  as  signs  of  what  is  coming  so  that  we  may 
be  ready  for  it.  To  this  end  it  is  far  more 
important  to  know  the  general  laws  according 
to  which  facts  occur  than  to  experience  the 
facts  themselves  in  their  fullness.  Our  intel- 
lectual habits  which  prompt  us  to  set  to  work 

33 


'mi':    MISUS]-    ()!■     MINI) 

at  once  in  o\'cry  iiii!,iinili;ir  situation  to 
analyse  and  classify  it  fit  us  lor  discovering 
these  laws  :  in  so  far  as  we  are  intellectual  we 
incline  to  regard  facts  mainly  as  material  for 
arriving  at  descriptions  which  themselves 
form  the  material  out  of  which,  by  a  further 
intellectual  effort,  explanations  are  framed  in 
terms  of  general  laws,  which  we  need  to  know 
if  we  are  to  be  ready  for  what  is  going  to 
happen.  Now  these  laws  are  general  laws 
applying  to  whole  classes  of  facts  of  one  kind, 
or  another.  Facts,  therefore,  only  form 
material  for  discovering  laws  in  so  far  as  they 
can  be  classified  into  kinds. 

The  first  step  in  classifying  a  fact  is  called 
analysis  and  consists  in  discovering  common 
qualities  which  the  fact  possesses.  According 
to  Bergson  the  discovery  of  common  qualities 
in  a  fact  consists  simply  in  learning  to  overlook 
everything  in  that  fact  except  the  respects  in 
which  it  can  be  said  to  be  of  the  same  kind, 
and  so  to  belong  to  tlie  same  class,  as  other 
facts.  Far  from  adding  to  our  direct  know- 
ledge, as  common  sense  supposes,  he  holds  that 
analysis  consists  in  shutting  our  eyes  to  the 
inchviduality  of  facts  in  orcler  to  dwell  only 
upon  what  they  have  in  common  with  one 
another.  Starting,  then,  from  the  wider  field 
of  knowledge  which  he  assumes  Bergson 
explains  how  we  reach  the  limited  facts,  which 
are  all  that  we  ordinarily  know,  by  saying 
that  these  facts  are  arrived  at  by  selection 

34 


EXPLANATION 

out  of  this  imuh  wi'li-i'  lirld.  It  is  not  the 
disiutorestiHl  love  of  kmiwlcd^'c  that  dctci- 
mines  how  nuicli  \vc  shall  actually  attend  to: 
our  selection  from  the  whole  field  of  what 
facts  we  will  attend  to  is  determined  by  the 
jircssing  need  of  being  prepared  in  advance 
for  the  facts  which  are  to  come.  Wc  attend 
only  to  so  much  of  the  whole  of  what  is,  in 
some  sense,  directly  known  to  us  as  will  be 
useful  for  framing  the  general  laws  which 
enable  us  to  prepare  in  advance  for  what  is 
coming.  This  practical  utility  explains  why 
analysis  and  classification  seem  to  us  to  be 
the  obvious  way  of  dealing  with  what  wc 
know. 

The  work  of  abstraction  by  which,  treating 
the  facts  directly  known  as  so  much  material 
for  framing  explanations,  we  pass  from  these 
actual  facts  to  the  general  laws  which  explain 
them,  falls  into  four  stages,  and  at  each  stage, 
according  to  Bergson,  as  we  go  further  and 
further  from  the  original  fact  directly  known, 
the  two  vices  of  the.  intellectual  method, 
limitation  and  distortion  of  the  actual  fact, 
become  more  and  more  apparent. 

Starting  from  the  fact  directly  known, the  first 
thing,  as  we  have  seen,  is  to  learn  to  distinguish 
common  qualities  which  it  shares  in  common 
with  some,  but  not  all,  other  facts  ;  the  next 
thing  is  to  classify  it  by  fitting  it  into  the 
further  groups  to  which  these  various  qualities 
entitle  it  to  belong.     The  moment  a  qualit\' 

35 


TIII^     MISUSIC    ()!•"    MINI) 

\n{o  "tliiii/^s"  tlirrcforc  only  the  c]ualities 
ill  a  fact  will  he  of  any  uso,  and  so,  when  we 
have  reached  tlie  stage  of  classification,  we 
need  no  longer  burden  our  attention  with 
the  actual  facts  themselves  in  their  entirety, 
we  need  pay  attention  only  to  the  qualities 
which  distinguish  one  group  from  another. 
For  the  purpose  of  classification  into  "  things  " 
the  quahty  can  stand  for  the  whole  fact  : 
thus,  as  Bergson  points  out,  we  begin  to  lose 
contact  with  the  whole  fact  originally  known, 
since  all  the  rest  of  it  except  the  respects 
in  which  it  can  be  analysed  will  henceforth 
tend  to  be  ignored. 

The  third  stage  in  explaining  facts  in  terms 
of  general  laws  is  called  induction  and  con- 
sists in  observing  and  formulating  the  relations 
of  "  things."  "  Things  "  are  related  to  each 
other  through  their  qualities.  Qualities  do 
not  give  us  the  whole  fact,  because,  when 
we  have  distinguished  qualities,  we  are  in- 
clined to  concentrate  our  attention  on  the 
quality  at  the  expense  of  the  rest  of  the  fact ; 
nevertheless  while  we  attend  to  actual  qual- 
ities we  have  not  lost  contact  with  fact 
altogether.  Induction,  which  consists  in 
framing  general  laws  of  the  relations  of 
"  things,"  though  it  does  not  involve  atten- 
tion to  the  whole  fact,  does  at  least  demand 
attention  to  qualities,  and  so,  while  we  are 
occupied  with  induction,  we  do  still  keep 
touch  with  fact  to  some  extent. 

38 


i':xri.ANA  rioN 

Once  the  rclatidii'^  of  <|ualitirs  \\a\'v  hin-ii 
observerl  and  fonnulntrd,  li()\v<'\cr,  we  nvvd 
no  longer  attend  to  any  part  of  the  fact  at  all. 
Instead  of  the  actual  qualities  we  now  take 
symbols,  words,  for  example,  or  letters,  or 
other  signs,  and  with  these  symbols  we  make 
for  ourselves  diagrams  of  the  relations  in 
which  we  have  observed  that  the  qualities 
which  they  represent  have  stood  to  each 
other.  Thus  we  might  use  the  words 
"  lightning  before  thunder  "  or  first  an  1. 
and  then  a  T,  to  express  the  fact  that  in  a 
storm  we  usually  observe  the  quality  of 
flashing  before  the  quality  of  rumbling.  Such 
laws  do  not  actually  reveal  new  facts  to 
us,  they  can  only  tell  us,  provided  we 
actually  know  a  fact  belonging  to  a  given 
class,  to  what  other  class  facts  which  we 
shall  know  bye  and  bye  will  belong.  Thus, 
once  we  have  classilied  facts  as  belonging 
to  two  classes,  daylight  and  darkness,  and 
have  observed  the  invariable  alternation  of 
facts  belonging  to  these  classes,  then,  when- 
ever we  know  directly  facts  which  can  be 
classed  as  daylight,  we  can  predict,  according 
to  our  law  of  the  alternation  of  the  two 
classes,  that  bye  and  bye  these  facts  will 
give  place  to  others  which  can  be  classed 
as  darkness  and  that  bye  and  bye  these  in 
their  turn  will  be  replaced  by  facts  winch 
can  again  be  classed  as  daylight.  The  prac- 
tical value  of  being  able  to  make  even  such 

39 


TTIK    MISUSl'.    ()]■     MINI) 

elementary  j)rcdictions  ;is  tlichc  is  dbvimisly 
enormous,  and  this  value  increases  as  a])|)li((l 
science,  which  is  built  up  simj^ly  l;y  the 
formulation  of  more  and  more  comprehensive 
general  laws  of  this  type,  widens  the  field 
of  facts  which  can  be  explained.  Once  the 
laws  are  known,  moreover,  we  arc  able  to 
say  to  what  class  the  facts  must  have  be- 
longed which  preceded  a  fact  of  any  given 
class  just  as  easily  as  we  can  say  to  what 
class  the  facts  which  are  to  follow  it  will 
belong.  Thus,  given  a  fact  which  can  be 
classed  as  daylight,  we  can  infer,  by  means 
of  the  law  of  the  alternation  of  the  classes 
daylight  and  darkness,  not  only  that  facts 
which  can  be  classed  as  darkness  will  follow 
bye  and  bye,  but  also  that  facts  of  that  class 
must  have  gone  before.  In  this  way  we 
can  explain  the  causes  of  all  classifiable 
facts  equally  with  their  effects  and  so  bridge 
over  the  gaps  in  our  direct  knowledge  by 
creating  a  unified  plan  of  the  interrela- 
tions of  all  the  classes  to  which  facts  can 
belong.  By  means  of  this  plan  we  can 
explain  any  fact  (that  is  classify  its  causes 
and  effects),  provided  we  can  fit  it  into 
one  or  other  of  the  known  classes.  This  again 
is  of  enormous  practical  use  because,  when 
we  know  to  what  class  present  facts  must 
belong  if  they  are  to  be  followed  by  the  class 
of  facts  which  we  want,  or  not  to  be  fol- 
lowed    by    those   whicli     we    do    not    want, 


I'lXl'I  ANATION 
W(-    ran     arrange    mir     prcscnl     farls    arcord- 

l-Jergson   would  not    lliink  of  (Iciiying  that 
tliis  intellectual   method,   in   which   facts  are 
used    as   material   for   abstraction,    is   of   the 
utmost    practical    use    for    explaining    facts 
and    so    enabling    us    to    control    them.     He 
suggests,    however,    that    our    preoccupation 
with   these    useful   abstractions,    classes   and 
their  relations,   misleads   us  as  to  the   facts 
themselves.     What   actually   takes   place,   he 
thinks,  is  a  kind  of  substitution  of  the  ex- 
planation for  the  fact  which  was  to  be  ex- 
plained, analogous  with  what  happens  when 
a  child  at  a  party,  or  a  guest  at  dinner,  is 
misled     about     his     actual    sensations,     only 
this   substitution   of    which    Bergson    speaks, 
being  habitual,  is  much  harder  to  see  through. 
Explanation,    as   we   have   seen,    consists   in 
constructing    a    plan    or    map    in    terms    of 
such    abstractions    as    classes    and    their    re- 
lations, or  sometimes,  when  the  abstraction 
has    been    carried   a   step   further,    in    terms 
simply   of   words   or  symbols,   by   means   of 
which  we  represent  the  causal  relations  be- 
tween  such   of    the    actual    directly    known 
facts     as     can     be     classified.      This     plan 
is    more    comprehensive    and  complete   than 
the   actual    tacts    which    we    know    directly 
in  the  ordinary  course  of  things,   for  which 
it  stands,  and  it  enables  us  to  explain  these 
facts  in  terms  of  the  classes  of  causes  from 


'11  IK    MISUSE    ()!•     MINI) 

which  they  follow,  and  the  classes  of  effects 
which  they  produce.  No  explanation,  of 
course,  can  actually  acquaint  us  directly 
with  the  real  antecedent  or  consequent  facts 
themselves  :  it  can  only  tell  us  to  what  classes 
these  facts  must  belong.  The  terms  of  the 
plan  by  which  we  explain  the  facts,  the 
classes,  for  instance,  dayhght  and  darkness, 
and  their  relation  of  alternation,  or  the  words 
or  symbols  which  stand  for  classes  and 
relations  are  not  themselves  facts  but  ab- 
stractions. We  cannot  think  in  terms  of 
actual  facts :  the  intellectual  activity  by 
which  we  formulate  general  laws  can  only 
work  among  abstractions,  and  in  order  to 
explain  a  fact  we  are  obliged  to  substitute 
for  it  either  a  class  or  word  or  other  symbol. 
All  description  and  explanation  of  facts 
consists  in  substitutions  of  this  kind.  The 
explanation  applies  provided  the  abstraction 
is  based  on  fact,  that  is,  provided  it  is  possible 
to  fit  the  fact  to  which  the  explanation  is 
intended  to  apply  into  the  class  employed 
to  explain  it  :  the  general  law,  for  instance, 
about  the  alternation  of  the  classes  daylight' 
and  darkness  will  explain  any  facts  which 
can  be  fatted  into  one  or  other  of  these  classes, 
or  again  general  laws  about  dogs,  such  as 
"  dogs  lick  "  will  apply  to  whatever  fact 
belongs  at  once  to  all  the  simpler  classes, 
"  warm,"  "  rough,"  "  of  a  certain  size,  and 
smell,"  out  of  which  the  class  "  dog  "  is 
42 


KXIM.ANATION 

constructed.  The  general  law  itself,  however, 
docs  not  consist  of  such  facts  but  of  ab- 
stractions substituted  for  th(^  facts  them- 
selves. Such  substitution  is  extremely  useful 
and  perfectly  legitimate  so  long  as  we  keci) 
firm  hold  of  the  fact  as  well,  and  are  quite 
clear  about  what  is  fact  and  what  only 
symbol.  The  danger  is,  however,  that,  being 
preoccupied  with  describing  and  explaining 
and  having  used  abstractions  so  successfully 
for  these  purposes,  we  may  come  to  lose  our 
sense  of  fact  altogether  and  fail  to  distinguish 
between  actual  facts  and  the  symbols  which 
we  use  to  explain  them. 

This,  indeed,  is  just  what  Bergson  thinks 
really  does  happen.  No  doubt  an  intelligent 
physicist  is  perfectly  aware  that  the  vibra- 
tions and  wave  lengths  and  electrons  and 
forces  by  which  he  explains  the  changes 
that  take  place  in  the  material  world  arc 
fictions,  and  does  not  confuse  them  with  the 
actual  facts  in  which  his  actual  knowledge 
of  the  material  world  consists.  But  it  is 
much  more  doubtful  whether  he  distinguishes 
between  these  actual  facts  and  the  common 
sense  material  objects,  such  as  lumps  of 
lead,  pieces  of  wood,  and  so  on,  which  he 
probably  believes  he  knows  directly  but 
which  are  really  only  abstractions  derived 
from  the  facts  in  order  to  exi)lain  them  just 
as  much  as  his  own  \-ibrations  and  wave 
lengths.      Wlien   a  scii-nlist  IVaims  a  !iN])otli- 


Till':  Misusi<:  oi'-   mind 

(.'sis  lie  em])lo3-s  tlic  inlclleclual  method  of 
substitution  with  full  consciousness  of  what 
he  is  about  ;  he  recognises  that  its  terms 
are  abstractions  and  not  facts.  But  the 
intellectual  method  of  exj;)laining  by  substi- 
tuting general  abstractions  for  particular  facts 
is  not  confined  to  science.  All  description 
and  explanation,  from  the  first  uncritical 
assumptions  of  common  sense  right  up  to  the 
latest  scientific  hypothesis  employs  the  in- 
tellectual method  of  substituting  abstractions 
for  actual  facts.  The  common  sense  world 
of  things,  events,  qualities,  minds,  feelings, 
and  so  on,  in  which  we  all  pass  our  every 
day  lives  is  an  early  and  somewhat  crude 
attempt  to  describe  the  continually  changing 
fact  which  each  of  us  experiences  directly, 
but  it  is  perhaps  more  misleading  than  the 
later  elaborate  constructions  of  chemistry, 
physics,  biology  or  physchology  in  that  things 
and  qualities  are  more  easily  mistaken  for 
facts  than  more  obviously  hypothetical 
assumptions.  Bergson  points  out  that  the 
various  things  of  which  this  common  sense 
world  consists,  solid  tables,  green  grass, 
anger,  hope,  etc.,  are  not  facts  :  these  things, 
he  insists,  are  only  abstractions.  They  are 
convenient  for  enabling  us  to  describe  and 
explain  the  actual  facts  which  each  of  us 
experiences  directly,  and  they  are  based  upon 
these  facts  in  the  sense  of  being  abstracted 
from   them.     The  objection   to   them  is   that 

44 


ICXPl.ANATION 

\\c  arc  too  much  iin  liiK  d  (n  t;ikr  i(  for  granted 
that  these  things  and  (|ualities  and  c\'cnts 
actually  arc  facts  tlKinseivcs,  and  in  so  doing 
to  lose  sight  of  the  real  facts  altogether. 
In  support  of  his  view  that  things  having 
qualities  in  successive  relations  arc  mere 
abstractions  Bergson  jxjints  out  that  when- 
ever we  stop  to  examine  what  it  actually 
is  that  we  know  directly  we  can  see  at  once 
that  this  fact  does  not  consist  of  things 
and  qualities  at  all  :  things  and  qualities 
are  clearly  marked  off  one  from  another,; 
they  change  as  a  scries  of  distinct  terms,  but 
in  what  we  know  directly  there  arc  no  clear 
cut  distinctions  and  so  no  series.  The  assumj)- 
tion  which  we  usually  make  that  the  facts 
must  consist  of  such  things  as  events  and 
qualities  and  material  objects  is  not  based 
upon  the  evidence  of  direct  knowledge  :  we 
make  the  assumption  that  the  facts  must 
be  of  this  kind  simply  because  they  can  be 
explained  in  these  terms. 

It  is  true  that  there  is  some  correspondence 
between  the  actual  facts  and  the  common 
sense  world  of  solid  tables  and  so  on,  and 
we  usually  jump  to  the  conclusion  that  this 
correspondence  would  not  be  possible  unless 
the  facts  had  common  qualities.  There  is 
no  denying  that  facts  can  be  classified  and 
it  seems  only  natural  to  take  it  for  granted 
that  whatever  can  be  classified  must  share 
some  quality  with   whatever   belongs   to   the 

■15 


THE    MISirSF.    OF    MINT) 

same  class,  that,  indeed,  it  is  just  on  account 
of  all  sharing  the  same  common  quality  that 
facts  can  be  classified  as  being  all  of  the  same 
kind.  Thus  common  sense  takes  it  for  granted 
that  all  facts  which  can  be  classified  as  red, 
and  so  explained  by  all  the  general  laws  which 
we  know  about  the  relation  of  red  things  to 
other  things,  must  share  a  common  quality 
of  redness.  It  seems  only  natural  to  make 
this  assumption  because  we  arc  so  used  to 
making  it,  but  if  we  stop  to  examine  the 
facts  which  we  know  directly  we  discover  that 
they  do  not  bear  it  out,  and  we  are  gradually 
driven  to  the  conclusion  that  it  is  quite 
unwarranted.  It  is  only  bit  by  bit,  as 
we  gradually  accustom  ourselves  to  doubting 
what  we  have  been  accustomed  to  take 
for  granted,  that  we  realize  how  ill  this 
assumption  fits  the  facts. 


46 


CHAPTER    II 

FACT 

Common  sense  starts  out  with  tlie  assumption 
that  what  we  kn(jw  directly  is  sucli  tilings  as 
trees,  grass,  anger,  hope  and  so  on,  and  that 
these  things  have  qualities  such  as  solidity, 
greenness,  unpleasantness  and  so  on,  which 
are  also  facts  directly  known.  It  is  not  very 
difficult  to  show  that,  if  we  examine  the  facts 
which  we  know  directly,  we  cannot  find  in 
them  any  such  things  as  trees,  grass,  or  minds, 
over  and  above  the  various  qualities  which 
we  say  belong  to  them.  I  see  one  colour  and 
you  see  another  :  both  of  them  are  colours 
belonging  to  the  grass  but  neither  of  us  can 
find  anything  among  the  facts  known  to  him 
corresponding  to  this  grass,  regarded  as  some- 
thing over  and  above  its  various  qualities, 
to  which  those  qualities  are  supposed  to 
belong. 

This  drives  common  sense  back  unto  its 
second  line  of  defence  where  it  takes  up  the 
much  stronger  position  of  asserting  that, 
while  trees,  grass,  minds,  etc.,  arc  not  among 
the   facts   directly    known,    their   (jualitics   of 

47  " 


Till':    MISUSE    0\'     I\11N'I> 

solidity,  gricniicss,  etc.,  arc.  It  is  usual  to 
add  tliat  these  (|ualities  are  signs  of  real  trees, 
grass,  etc.,  which  exist  independently  but  are 
only  known  to  us  through  their  quahties. 

It  is  much  harder  to  attack  this  position, 
but  its  weakness  is  best  exposed  by  consider- 
ing change  as  we  know  it  directly,  and  com- 
paring this  with  change  as  represented  in 
terms  of  qualities.  Change,  when  repre- 
sented in  terms  of  qualities,  forms  a  series 
in  which  different  qualities  are  strung  together 
one  after  the  other  by  the  aid  of  temporal 
relations  of  before  and  after.  The  change 
perceived  when  we  look  at  the  spectrum 
would  thus  have  to  be  described  in  terms 
of  a  series  of  colours,  red  before  orange, 
orange  before  yellow,  yellow  before  green, 
and  so  on.  We  might  certainly  go  into 
greater  detail  than  this,  distinguishing  any 
number  of  shades  in  each  of  the  colours 
mentioned,  but  the  description  would  still 
have  to  be  given  in  the  same  form,  that  of 
a  series  of  different  colours,  or  shades  of 
colour,  strung  together  by  relations  of  before 
and  after.  Now  the  fact  which  we  know 
directly  does  not  change  so  :  it  forms  a  con- 
tinuous becoming  which  is  not  made  up  of 
any  number,  however  great,  of  fixed  stages. 
When  we  want  to  represent  this  changing 
fact  in  terms  of  qualities  we  have  to  put 
together  a  series  of  qualities,  such  as  red, 
orange,  etc.,  and  then  say  that  "  the  colour  " 


clian,L;rs  l'r<iin  hih'  oI  (Iksc  to  iUHillnr.  We 
]n"ct('n(l  tli.it  tliiic  is  "  ;i  (dIoui"  wliicli  is 
not  itscU  citlicr  ixd  oi'  j^jrccii  or  orant^e  oi" 
l)lne,  which  clianges  in(o  all  these  (hfferent 
colours  one  after  another.  It  is  not  \-ery 
(Hfficult  to  sec  that  this  abstract  colour  wliich 
is  neither  red  nor  orange  nor  green  nor  blue 
is  not  a  fact  but  only  an  abstraction  which 
is  convenient  for  purposes  of  description  : 
it  is  not  quite  so  easy  to  see  that  this  criticism 
apphes  equally  to  each  of  the  separate  colours, 
red,  orange,  etc.,  and  yet  a  little  attention 
shows  that  these  also  are  really  nothing  but 
abstractions.  With  reference  to  the  whole 
changing  fact  which  is  known  directly  through 
an}'  period  the  change  in  respect  of  colour 
is  clearly  an  abstraction.  But  just  as  there 
is  no  "  colour  "  over  and  above  the  red,  the 
orange,  the  grciMi,  etc.,  wliich  we  say  we  see, 
so  there  is  really  no  "  red,"  "  orange," 
"  green,"  over  and  aboxc  the  changing  pro- 
cess with  which  we  are  directly  acquainted. 
Each  of  these,  the  red,  the  orange,  and  so  on, 
just  like  the  abstract  "  colour,"  is  simi:)ly  a 
fictitious  stage  in  the  j)rocess  of  clianging 
which  it  is  convenient  to  abstract  when  we 
want  to  describe  the  process  but  wliich  does 
not  itself  occur  as  a  distinct  part  in  the  actual 
fact. 

Change,  as  we  know  it  directly,  does  not 
go  on  between  li.xed  points  such  as  these 
stages  which  we  abstract,  it  goes  on   inipar- 

4') 


'IHF,    MISUSE    OF    MINI) 

tially,  as  it  upie,  tIirou{,'li  the  supposed  stages 
just  as  nuicli  as  in  iDetween  tliem.  But 
tliough  fixed  stages  arc  not  needed  to  enable 
change  to  occur,  simply  as  a  fact,  tiiey  are 
needed  if  we  are  to  describe  change  and  ex- 
phiin  it  in  terms  of  general  laws.  Qualities 
are  assumptions  required,  not  in  order  that 
change  may  take  place,  but  in  order  that  we 
may  describe,  explain,  and  so  control  it. 
Such  particular  qualities  as  red  and  green  are 
really  no  more  facts  directly  known  than 
such  still  more  general,  and  so  more  obviously 
fictitious  notions  as  a  colour  which  is  of  no 
particular  shade,  or  a  table,  or  a  mind,  apart 
from  its  qualities  or  states.  All  these  fixed 
things  are  alike  abstractions  required  for 
explaining  facts  directly  known  but  not 
occurring  as  actual  parts  of  those  facts  or 
stages  in  their  change. 

Thus  it  appears  that  tlie  common  sense 
world  of  things  and  qualities  and  events  is 
in  the  same  position,  with  regard  to  the  actual 
facts  directly  known  as  scientific  hypotheses 
such  as  forces,  electrons,  and  so  on,  in  their 
various  relations :  none  of  these  actually 
form  parts  of  the  fact,  all  of  them  are  ab- 
stractions from  the  fact  itself  which  are  useful 
for  explaining  and  so  controlling  it.  Common 
sense  stops  short  at  things  and  qualities  and 
events  ;  science  carries  the  abstraction  fur- 
ther, that  is  all  the  difference  :  the  aim  in 
both  cases  is  the  same,  the  practical  one  of 

50 


l-ACT 

cxplainint;  nnd  so  controlling  facts  diictly 
known.  In  both  cases  the  method  cniplnyid 
is  the  intellectual  method  of  abstrrut inn  which 
begins  by  discriminating  within  the  whole 
field  directly  known  in  favour  of  just  so  much 
as  will  enable  us  to  classify  it  and  ignoring 
the  rest,  and  then  proceeds  to  confuse  even 
this  selected  amount  of  the  actual  fact  with 
the  abstract  classes  or  other  symbols  in  terms 
of  which  it  is  explained.  We  have  just  seen 
how  the  result,  the  worlds  of  common  sense 
or  science,  differ  from  the  actual  facts  in  the 
way  in  which  they  change  :  these  worlds  of 
abstractions  represent  change  as  a  series  of 
fixed  stages  united  by  temj)oral  relations, 
while  the  actual  fact  forms  a  continuous  pro- 
cess of  becoming  which  does  not  contain  any 
such  fixed  points,  as  stages  in  relations. 

The  more  we  shake  ourselves  free  from  tlie 
common  sense  and  scientific  bias  towards  sub- 
stituting explanations  for  actual  facts  the 
more  clearly  we  see  that  this  continuous  pro- 
cess of  changing  is  the  very  essence  of  what 
we  know  directly,  and  the  more  we  realize 
how  unlike  such  a  continuous  process  is  to 
any  series  of  stages  in  relation  of  succession. 

The  unsatisfactoriness  of  sucli  descriptions 
is  no  new  discovery  :  the  logical  difficulties 
connected  with  the  attempt  to  describe  change 
in  terms  of  series  of  successive  things  or  events 
have  been  familiar  since  the  time  when  Zeno 
invented    the    famous    dilemma    of    Acliillrs' 

51 


'IIIl':     MISI'SIC    ()\-     MINI) 

race  with  tlie  tortoise.  iMathematicians  have 
been  in  the  habit  of  telhng  us  that  these  diffi- 
culties depend  simply  on  the  fact  that  we 
imagine  the  series  of  positions  at  which 
Achilles  and  the  tortoise  find  tliemselvcs 
from  moment  to  moment  as  finite  :  the  de- 
vice of  the  infinite  series,  they  say,  satisfies 
all  the  requirements  needed  for  representing 
change  and  solves  all  the  logical  difficulties 
which  arise  from  it.  Bergson's  difficulties, 
however,  cannot  be  solved  in  this  way  for 
they  are  not  based  upon  the  discovery  of 
logical  absurdities  but  upon  the  discrepancy 
between  the  description  and  the  fact.  What 
he  maintains  is  that  the  description  of  change 
in  terms  of  an  infinite  series  of  stages  leaves 
out  the  change  altogether.  Zeno's  logical 
dilemma  as  to  how  Achilles  could  ever  catch 
up  with  the  tortoise  provided  the  tortoise 
was  given  a  start,  however  small,  may  be 
countered  by  the  ingenuity  of  the  mathe- 
maticians' infinite  series.  Bergson's  difikulty 
turns  on  a  question  of  fact,  not  of  logic,  and 
cannot  be  so  met.  He  solves  the  problem 
simply  by  denying'  that  Achilles  or  the  tor- 
toise ever  are  at  particular  points  at  particular 
moments.  Such  a  description  of  change,  he 
says,  leaves  out  the  real  changing.  And  the 
introduction  of  the  notion  of  an  infinite  series 
only  makes  the  matter  worse.  For  stages 
do  not  change,  and  so,  if  there  is  to  be  any 
change,  it   must,   presumably,   take  place  in 

5^ 


AC 


hct\vc(Mi  one  stage  and  i\\c  next.  JUit  in 
between  any  iwo  stages  of  an  inlinite  s(!rics 
there  ar(;  snpposed  to  be  an  infinite  number 
of  otlier  stages,  so  that  to  any  given  stage 
there  is  no  next  stage.  Change,  therefore, 
cannot  take  phic.e  between  oix'  stage  and  the 
next  oiu',  there  being  no  m-xt  one,  and  sinec 
it  is  equally  impossible  that  it  should  take 
]ilace  at  any  one  of  the  stages  themselves 
it  follows  that  an  infinite  series  of  stages  leaves 
out  change  altogether.  Similarly  a  series  of 
instants  before  and  after  one  another  leaves 
out  of  time  just  the  element  of  passage, 
becoming,  which  is  its  essence. 

The  truth,  Bergson  says,  is  that  with  fixed 
stages,  no  matter  how  many  you  take,  and 
no  matter  in  what  relation  you  arrange  them, 
you  cannot  reproduce  the  change  and  time 
which  actually  occur  as  facts  directly  known. 
If  Achilles  or 'the  tortoise  are  ever  at  different 
places  at  dii'ferent  moments  then  neither 
of  them  really  moves  at  all.  Change  and 
time,  as  represented  by  abstractions,  accord- 
ing to  the  intellectual  method,  consist  of 
stages  in  relations  of  succession,  but  the  fact 
does  not  happen  by  stages  and  is  not  held 
together  by  relations  :  if  we  comjxire  the 
representation  with  the  fact  we  find  that  they 
differ  profoundly  in  their  form. 

According  to  Bergson  this  difference  in 
form  is  one  of  the  two  essential  respects  in 
which    abstractions    fail    to    represent    facts 

5  J 


Till'.    MISUSE    OF    MIND 

and  in  wiiich,  consequently,  we  are  led  into 
error  as  to  tlie  facts  if  we  fail  to  distinguish 
them  from  the  abstractions  in  terms  of  which 
we  explain  them,  or  take  for  granted  that 
they  correspond  exactly  with  our  explanations. 

Bergson  gives  the  name  "  space  "  to  the 
form  which  belongs  to  abstractions  but  not 
to  actual  facts  :  abstractions,  he  says,  are 
"  spatial,"  but  facts  are  not.  This  use  of  the 
word  "  space  "  is  peculiar  and  perhaps  un- 
fortunate. Even  as  it  is  ordinarily  used  the 
word  "  space  "  is  ambiguous,  it  may  mean 
either  the  pure  space  with  which  higher 
mathematics  is  concerned,  or  the  public  space 
which  contains  the  common  sense  things  and 
objects  and  their  qualities  which  make  up  the 
every  day  world,  or  the  private  space  of 
sensible  perception.  When  Bergson  speaks 
of  "  space,"  however,  he  does  not  mean  either 
pure  or  public  or  private  space,  he  means  an 
a  priori  form  imposed  by  intellectual  activity 
upon  its  object.  This  resembles  Kant's  use 
of  the  word,  but  Bergson's  "  space  "  is  not, 
like  Kant's,  the  a  priori  form  of  sense  ac- 
quaintance, but  of  thought,  in  other  words 
logical  form.  For  Bergson  "spatial"  means 
"  logical,"  and  since  so  much  misunderstanding 
seems  to  have  been  caused  by  his  using  the 
word  "  space  "  in  this  peculiar  sense  we  shall 
perhaps  do  better  in  what  follows  to  use  the 
word  "  logical  "  instead. 

Now  whatever  is  logical  is  characterised  by 

54 


I'ACT 

consisting  of  dislinct,  inntn;illy  exclusive 
terms  in  external  relations  :  all  schemes, 
for  instance,  and  diagranis,  such  as  a  series  of 
dots  one  above  the  other,  or  one  below  the 
otlier,  or  one  behiiid,  or  in  front  of  tlie  other, 
or  a  scries  of  instants  one  after  the  other,  or  a 
series  of  numbers,  or  again  any  arrangements 
of  things  or  qualities  according  to  their 
relations,  such  as  colours  or  sounds  arranged 
according  to  their  resemblance  or  difference  ; 
in  all  these  each  dot  or  instant  or  number  or 
colour-shade  or  note,  is  quite  distinct  from 
all  the  others,  and  the  relations  which  join  it 
to  the  others  and  give  it  its  position  in  the 
whole  series  are  external  to  it  in  the  sense 
that  if  you  changed  its  position  or  included  it 
in  quite  another  series  it  would  nevertheless 
still  be  just  the  same  dot  or  instant  or  number 
or  quality  as  before. 

These  two  logical  characteristics  of  mutual 
distinction  of  terms  and  externality  of  rela- 
tions certainly  do  belong  to  the  abstractions 
employed  in  explanations,  and  we  commonly 
suppose  that  they  belong  to  everything  else 
besides.  Bergson,  however,  believes  that 
these  logical  characteristics  really  only  belong 
to  abstractions  and  are  not  discovered  in  facts 
but  are  imposed  upon  them  by  our  intel- 
lectual bias,  in  the  sense  that  we  take  it  for 
granted  that  the  facts  which  we  know  directly 
must  have  the  same  form  as  the  abstractions 
which  serve  to  explain  them. 


THE    MISUSE    OF    MINI) 

This  Iiabit  of  taking  it  for  granted  tliat 
not  only  our  abstractions  but  also  the  actual 
facts  have  the  logical  characteristics  of  con- 
sisting of  mutually  exclusive  terms  joined  by 
external  relations  is,  according  to  Bergson, 
one  of  the  two  serious  respects  in  which  our 
intellectual  bias  distorts  our  direct  acquaint- 
ance with  actual  fact.  He  points  out,  as  we 
saw,  that  the  facts  with  which  we  are  ac- 
quainted are  in  constant  process  of  changing, 
and  that,  when  we  examine  carefully  what  is 
actually  going  on,  we  discover  that  this 
change  does  not  really  form  a  series  of  distinct 
qualities  or  percepts  or  states,  united  by 
external  relations  of  time,  resemblance,  dif- 
ference, and  so  on,  but  a  continuous  process 
which  has  what  we  might  call  a  qualitative 
flavour  but  in  which  distinct  qualities,  states 
and  so  on  do  not  occur. 

"  Considered  in  themselves  "  he  says,  "  pro- 
found states  of  consciousness  have  no  relation 
to  (juantity :  they  are  mingled  in  such  a  waj'^ 
that  it  is  impossible  to  say  whether  they  are 
one  or  many,  or  indeed  to  examine  them  from 
that  point  of  view  without  distorting  them." 
Now,  strictly  speaking,  of  course,  these  "  states 
of  consciousness  "  ought  not  to  be  referred 
to  in  the  plural,  it  is,  in  fact,  a  contradiction 
to  speak  of  "  states  of  consciousness  "  having 
"  no  relation  to  quantity  "  :  a  plurality  must 
always  form  some  quantity.  This  contra- 
diction is  the  natural  consequence  of  attempt- 

56 


FACT 

iii.q  to  p\\\  what  is  noii  lo/jical  into  wnrds. 
It  wouUl  ha\('  been  just  as  bad  to  have  k  Icrrcd 
to  "  the  state  of  consciousness,"  in  the  singuhir, 
while  at  the  same  time  insisting  that  it  con- 
tained resemblance  and  difference.  The  fact  is 
that  plurality  and  unity,  like  distinct  terms 
and  external  relations,  apply  only  to  what- 
ever has  logical  form,  and  Bergson's  whole 
point  is  to  deny  that  the  fact  (or  facts)  directly 
known  have  this  form,  and  so  that  any  of 
these  notions  apply  to  it  (or  them.) 

This,  of  course,  raises  difficulties  when  we 
try  to  describe  the  facts  in  words,  since  words 
stand  for  abstractions  and  carry  their  logical 
implications.  All  descriptions  in  words  of 
what  is  non-logical  are  bound  to  be  a  mass  of 
contradictions,  for,  having  applied  any  word 
it  is  necessary  immediately  to  guard  against 
its  logical  implications  by  adding  another 
which  contradicts  them.  Thus  we  say  our 
experience  is  of  facts,  and  must  then  hastily 
add  that  nevertheless  they  are  not  plural, 
and  we  must  further  qualify  this  statement 
by  adding  that  neither  are  they  singular.  A 
description  of  what  is  non-logical  can  only 
convey  its  meaning  if  we  discount  all  the 
logical  implications  of  the  words  which,  for 
want  of  a  better  medium  of  expression,  we 
are  driven  to  employ.  Our  whole  intellectual 
bias  urges  us  towards  describing  everything 
that  comes  within  our  experience,  even  if  the 
description  is  only  for  our  own  private  benefit 

57 


Till-:    MISUSE    OF    MIND 

Unfortunately  the  language  in  uiiicli  those 
desciiptions  have  to  be  expressed  is  so  full 
of  logical  implications  that,  unless  we  are 
constantly  on  our  guard,  we  are  liable  to  be 
carried  away  by  them,  and  then,  at  once,  we 
lose  contact  with  the  actual  facts. 

In  order  to  get  round  this  almost  universal 
tendency  to  confuse  abstractions  with  facts 
Bergson  sometimes  tries  to  get  us  to  see  the 
facts  as  they  actually  are  by  using  metaphor 
instead  of  description  in  terms  of  abstract 
general  notions.  He  has  been  much  criticised 
for  this  but  there  is  really  a  good  deal  to  be 
said  for  attempting  to  convey  facts  by  sub- 
stituting metaphors  for  them  rather  than  by 
using  the  ordinary  intellectual  method  of 
substituting  abstractions  reached  b^'  analysis. 
Those  who  have  criticised  the  use  of  metaphor 
have  for  the  most  part  not  realized  how  little 
removed  such  description  is  from  the  ordinary 
intellectual  method  of  analysis.  They  have 
supposed  that  in  analysis  we  stick  to  the 
fact  itself,  whereas  in  using  metaphor  we 
substitute  for  the  fact  to  be  described  some 
quite  different  fact  which  is  onlj'  connected 
with  it  by  a  more  or  less  remote  analogy. 
If  Bergson's  view  of  the  intellectual  method 
is  right,  however,  when  we  describe  in  abstract 
terms  arrived  at  by  analysis  we  are  not  stick- 
ing to  the  facts  at  all,  we  are  substituting 
something  else  for  them  just  as  much  as  if  we 
were  using  an  out  and  out  metaphor.  Qualities 

5S 


I'ACT 

ami  all  abstract  /^(Micral  notions  arc,  indeed, 
nolliinf^  but  marks  oi  analogies  between  a 
given  fact  and  all  the  other  facts  belonging 
to  the  same  class  :  they  may  mark  rather 
closer  analogies  than  those  brought  out  by 
an  ordinary  nietaj)hor,  but  on  the  other  hand 
in  a  frank  metaphor  \vc  at  least  stick  to  the 
concrete,  we  substitute  fact  for  fact  and 
we  are  in  no  danger  of  confusing  the  fact 
introduced  by  the  metaphor  with  the  actual 
fact  to  which  the  metaphor  applies.  In 
description  in  terms  of  abstract  general  notions 
such  as  common  qualities  we  substitute  for 
fact  something  which  is  not  fact  at  all,  we 
lose  touch  with  the  concrete  and,  moreover, 
we  are  strongly  tempted  to  confuse  fact  with 
abstraction  and  believe  that  the  implications 
of  the  abstraction  apply  to  tlie  fact,  or  even 
that  the  abstraction  is  itself  a  real  part  of 
the  fact. 

Language  plays  a  most  important  part  in 
forming  our  habit  of  treating  all  facts  as 
material  for  generalisation,  and  it  is  largely 
to  the  influence  of  the  words  which  we  use 
for  describing  facts  that  Bergson  attributes 
our  readiness  to  take  it  for  granted  that  facts 
have  the  same  logical  form  as  abstractions. 
It  is  language  again  which  makes  it  so  diffi- 
cult to  point  out  that  this  assumption  is  mis- 
taken, because,  actually,  the  form  of  facts  is 
non-logical,  a  continuous  process  and  not  a 
series.     The   onl}'   way   to    point    this   out   is 

59 


Till':    MISUSE    OV    MINI) 

by  doscribiiit(  the  nature  of  tlie  non-logical 
facts  as  contrasted  with  a  logical  series,  but 
the  language  in  which  our  description  of  the 
non-logical  facts  has  to  be  conveyed  is  itself 
full  of  logical  implications  which  contradict 
the  very  point  we  are  trying  to  bring  out. 
Descriptions  of  non-logical  ])rocesses  will  only 
be  intelligible  if  we  discount  the  logical  im- 
plications inherent  in  the  words  employed, 
but  in  order  to  be  willing  to  discount  these 
implications  it  is  necessary  first  to  be  con- 
vinced that  there  is  anything  non-logical  to 
which  such  a  description  could  apply.  And 
yet  how  can  we  be  convinced  without  first 
understanding  the  description  ?  It  appears 
to  be  a  vicious  circle,  and  so  it  would  be  if 
our  knowledge  of  change  as  a  process  really 
depended  upon  our  understanding  anybody's 
description  of  it.  According  to  Bergson, 
however,  we  all  do  know  such  a  process 
directly  ;  in  fact,  if  he  is  right,  we  know 
nothing  else  directly  at  all.  The  use  of 
description  is  not  to  give  us  knowledge  of 
the  process,  that  we  already  have,  but  only 
to  remind  us  of  what  we  really  knew  all  along, 
but  had  rather  lost  contact  with  and  mis- 
interpreted because  of  our  preoccupation  with 
describing  and  explaining  it.  Bergson's  crit- 
icism of  our  intellectual  methods  turns  simply 
upon  a  question  of  fact,  to  be  settled  by 
direct  introspection.  If,  when  we  have  freed 
ourselves  from  the  preconceptions  created  by 
60 


I'ACT 

our  normal  coniiiinn  sense  intellectual  point 
of  view,  we  Iniil  that  what  u e  know  chrectly 
is  a  non-logical  ]:)roc(^ss  of  becoming,  then  we 
must  admit  tiiat  intellectual  thinking  is 
altogether  inap])ropriate  and  even  mischievous 
as  a  method  ot  speculation. 

It  is  one  of  J^ergson's  chief  aims  to  induce 
us  to  regain  contact  witli  our  (hrcct  experience, 
and  it  is  with  this  in  view  that  he  spends  so 
much  effort  in  describing  what  the  form  of 
this  experience  actually  is,  and  how  it  com- 
pares with  the  logical  form  which  belongs  to 
abstractions,  that  is  with  what  he  calls 
"  space." 

The  form  which  belongs  to  facts  but  not 
to  abstractions  Rergson  calls  "  duration." 
Duration  can  be  described  negatively  by 
saying  that  it  is  non-logical,  but  when  we 
attempt  any  positive  description  language 
simply  breaks  down  and  we  can  do  nothing  but 
contradict  ourselves.  Duration  does  not  CT)n- 
tain  parts  united  by  external  relations  : 
it  does  not  contain  parts  at  all,  for  parts 
would  constitute  fixed  stages,  whereas  dura- 
tion  changes  continuously. 

But  in  ortler  to  describe  duration  at  all 
we  have  logically  oiily  two  alternatives, 
either  to  s])eak  of  it  as  a  plurality,  anci  that 
im})lies  ha\'ing  parts,  or  else  as  a  unilw 
and  that  by  implication,  excludes  change. 
Being  particularly  concerned  to  emphasise 
the  changing  nature  of  what  we  know  directly 


IlIE    MISUSR    OF    MIND 

Bcrgson  rejects  tlie  latter  alternative  :  short 
of  simply  giving  up  the  attempt  to  describe 
it  he  has  then  no  choice  but  to  treat  this 
process  which  he  calls  duration  as  a  plurality 
and  this  drives  him  into  speaking  of  it  as  if 
it  had  parts.  To  correct  this  false  impression 
he  adds  that  these  parts  are  united,  not,  like 
logical  parts,  by  external  relations,  but  in 
quite  a  new  way,  by  "  synthesis."  "  Parts  " 
united  by  synthesis  have  not  the  logical  char- 
acteristics of  mutual  distinction  and  ex- 
ternality of  relations,  they  interpenetrate 
and  modify  one  another.  In  a  series  which 
has  duration  (such  a  thing  is  a  contradiction 
in  terms,  but  the  fault  lies  with  the  logical 
form  of  language  which,  in  spite  of  its  un- 
satisfactoriness  we  are  driven  to  employ 
if  we  want  to  describe  at  all)  the  "  later 
parts  "  are  not  distinct  from  the  "  earlier"  : 
"  earher  and  "  "  later  "  are  not  mutually 
eJcclusive  relations. 

Bergson  says,  then,  that  the  process  of 
duration  which  we  know  directly,  if  it  is 
to  be  called  a  series  at  all,  must  be  described 
as  a  series  whose  "  parts  "  interpenetrate, 
and  this  is  the  first  important  respect  in 
which  non-logical  duration  differs  from  a 
logical  series.  In  "  a  series  "  which  is  used 
to  describe  duration  not  only  are  the 
"  parts  "  not  distinct  but  "  their  relations  " 
are  not  external  in  the  sense,  previously 
explained,  in  which  logical  relations  are 
62 


FACT 

external  to  the  terms  wliich  tliej'  relate. 
A  logical  term  in  a  logical  series  can  change 
its  position  or  enter  into  a  wholly  different 
series  and  still  remain  the  same  term.  But 
the  terms  in  a  series  which  has  duration 
(again  this  is  aljsurd)  are  wliat  tlu^y  an- 
just  because  of  their  position  in  the  whole 
stream  of  duration  to  which  they  belong  : 
to  transfer  them  from  one  position  in  the 
series  to  another  would  be  to  alter  their 
whole  flavour  which  depends  upon  having 
had  just  that  particular  past  and  no  other. 
As  illustration  we  might  take  the  last  bar 
of  a  tune.  By  itself,  or  following  upon 
other  sounds  not  belonging  to  the  tune, 
this  last  bar  would  not  be  itself,  its  par- 
ticular quality  depends  upon  coming  at  the 
end  of  that  particular  tune.  In  a  process 
of  duration,  then,  such  as  tune,  the  "later" 
bars  are  not  related  externally  to  the 
"  earlier  "  but  depend  for  their  character 
upon  their  position  in  the  whole  tune.  In 
actual  fact,  of  course,  the  tune  progresses 
continuously,  and  not  by  stages,  such  as 
distinct  notes  or  bars,  but  if,  for  the  sake  of 
description,  we  speak  of  it  as  composed  of 
different  bars,  we  must  say  that  any  bar 
we  choose  to  distinguish  is  modified  by  the 
whole  of  the  tune  which  has  gone  before  it  : 
change  its  position  in  the  whole  stream  of 
sound  to  which  it  belongs  and  you  change 
its  character  absolutely. 

63  E 


THE    MISUSl':    OF    MIND 

This   means   that    in   chanf^'C   sue  li    as   this, 
change,  that  is,  which  has  duration,  repeti- 
tion  is   out   of   the   question.     Take   a   song 
in  which  the  last  hne  is  sung  twice  over  as  a 
refrain  :     the    notes,    we    say.    arc    repeated, 
but    the    second    time    tlie    hne    occurs    the 
actual  effect  produced  is  different,  and  that, 
indeed,  is  the  whole  point  of  a  refrain.     This 
illustrates    the    second   important    difference 
which  Bergson  wants  to  bring  out  between 
the  forms  of  change  which  belong  respectively 
to  non-logical  facts  and  to  the  logical  abstrac- 
tions  by   which   we   describe    them,    that    is 
between  duration  as  contrasted  with  a  logical 
series  of  stages.     The  notes  are  abstractions 
assumed    to    explain    the    effect    produced, 
which    is    the    actual    fact    directly    known. 
The   notes   are   stages   in    a   logical   scries   of 
change,    but    their    effects,    the    actual    fact, 
changes    as    a    process    of    duration.     From 
this    difference    in    their    ways    of    changing 
there    follows    an    important    difference    be- 
tween   fact    and    abstraction,    namely    that, 
while  the  notes  can  be  repeated  over  again, 
the  effect  will  never  be  the  same  as  before. 
This  is  because  the  notes,  being  abstractions, 
are    not    affected    by    their    relations    which 
give  them  their  position  in  the  logical  series 
which  they  form,  while  their  effect,  being  a 
changing    process,    depends    for    its    flavour 
upon  its  position  in   the  whole  duration   to 
which    it    belongs  :     this    flavour   grows    out 
of  the  whole  of  what  has  gone  before,  and 
64 


I'Ac  r 

since  this  whole  is  ilsi'lf  always  growing  by 
the  ackUtioii  uf  more  and  nioic  "  later  stages," 
the  effect  which  it  goes  to  prothiee  can  never  be 
the  same  twice  over. 

This  is  why  l»ergs()n  calls  duration  "  crt'a- 
tive." 

No  "  two  "  {jositions  in  a  creative  process 
of  duration  can  have  an  identical  past 
history,  every  "  later  "  one  will  have  more 
history,  every  "  earlier  "  one  less.  In  a 
logical  series,  on  the  other  hand,  tliere  is  no 
reason  why  the  same  term  should  not  occur 
over  and  over  again  at  different  points  in  the 
course  of  the  series,  since  in  a  logical  series 
every  term,  being  distinct  from  every  other 
and  only  joined  to  it  by  external  relations, 
is  what  it  is  independently  of  its  position. 

If  Bergson  is  right  therefore  in  saying  that 
abstractions  change  as  a  logical  series  while 
the  actual  facts  change  as  a  creative  process 
of  duration,  it  follows  that,  while  our  descrip- 
tions and  explanations  may  contain  repeti- 
tions the  actual  fact  to  which  we  intend  these 
explanations  to  apply,  cannot.  This,  if  true, 
is  a  very  important  difference  between  facts 
and  abstractions  which  common  sense  en- 
tirely overlooks  when  it  assumes  that  we  are 
directly   acquainted   with   common    qualities. 

We  have  seen  that  this  assumption  is 
taken  for  granted  in  the  accoimt  which  is 
ordinarily  given  (or  would  be  given  if  people 
were  in  the  habit  of  putting  their  common 
sense  assumptions  into  words)   of  how  it   is 


IIIF.  MISUSE  OF  MIND 
that  facts  come  to  be  classified  :  facts  are 
supposed  to  fall  into  classes  because  they 
share  coninion  qualities,  that  is  because, 
in  the  changing  fact  directly  known,  the  same 
quahties  recur  over  and  over  again.  There 
is  no  doubt  that  the  fact  with  which  we  are 
directly  acquainted  can  be  classified,  and 
it  is  equally  undeniable  that  this  fact  is 
always  changing,  but  if  this  change  has  the 
form  of  creative  duration  then  its  classifica- 
tion  cannot  be  based  upon  the  repetition  of 
qualities  at  different  "  stages  "  in  its  course. 
It  follows  that  either  the  fact  with  which 
we  are  directly  acquainted  does  not  change 
as  a  creative  process,  or  else  that  we  are  quite 
wrong  in  assuming,  as  we  ordinarily  do,  that 
we  actually  know  qualities  directly  and  that 
it  is  these  qualities  which  form  the  basis  of 
classification,  and  hence  of  all  description 
and  explanation.  We  have  already  seen  that 
this  assumption,  though  at  first  sight  one 
naturally  supposes  it  to  be  based  on  direct 
acquaintance,  may  really  depend  not  on 
any  fact  directly  known  but  on  our  pre- 
occupation with  explanation  rather  than  with 
mere  knowing. 

But  if  we  never  really  are  acquainted  with 
qualities,  if  qualities  are,  as  Bergson  says, 
mere  abstractions,  how  come  we  to  be  able  to 
make  these  abstractions,  and  why  do  they 
apply  to  actual  facts  ?  If  classification  is  not 
based  on  common  qualities  discovered  by 
66 


analysis  and  icp.Mi,  ,|  nviv  mid  <)\cr  ;is  nrdial 
facts   dircctl\    kiidwn,   on    \vli;it    is   it    biiscd  ? 
We     certainly-  c;iii   cLissilx-     lads     and     tlirsc 
abstract    common    (|nali(ics.    if    abstractions 
they  he,  certainly  corresiiond  to  smnct liin.tj  in 
the  facts  since  tJicy  a|>i)ly  to  them  :    what  is 
the  foundation  in   diixcljy  known  la<t  whicii 
accounts  for  this  correspondence  between  ab- 
stractions and  facts  if  it  is  not  qualities  actually 
given  as  part  of  the  facts  ?   These  questiojis  are 
so  very  pertinent  andat  the  same  time  sodifticult 
to  answer  satisfactorily  that  one  is  tempted 
to  throw  over  the  view  that  the  changing  fact 
which    we    know    directly    forms    a    creative 
duration.     This  view  is  impossible  to  express 
without  self-contradiction  and  it  does  not  fit 
in    with    our    accustomed    liabits    of    mind  : 
nevertheless  if  we  do  not  simply  reject  it  at 
once  as  patently  absurd  but  keej-)  it  in  mind 
for  a  while  and  allow  ourselves  time  to  get 
used  to  it,  it  grows  steadily  more  and  more 
convincing  :    we  become  less  and  less  able  to 
evade  these  difficult  questions  by  accepting  the 
common    sense    account    of    what    we    know 
directly  as  consisting  of  a  series  of  qualities 
which  are  repeated  over  and  over,  and  more 
and  more  dri\'en  to  regard  it  as  a  ])roress  in 
creative   duration    which    does   not   admit   of 
repetitions.    There  is  no  difticulty  in  seeing,  the 
moment  we  pay  attention,  that  what  we  know 
directly  certainly  does  change  all  the  time  : 
but  if  we  try  to  ))in  this  change  down  and  hold 
67 


THE    MISUSE    OF    MINH 

it  so  as  to  examine  it  we  find  it  slipping 
through  our  fingers,  and  the  more  we  look  into 
the  supposed  stages,  such  as  things  and  quah- 
ties  and  events,  by  means  of  which  common 
sense  assumes  that  this  change  takes  place, 
the  more  it  becomes  apparent  that  these  stages 
are  all  of  them  mere  arbitrary  abstractions 
dragged  from  their  context  in  a  continuous 
process,  fictitious  halting  places  in  a  stream 
of  change  which  goes  on  unbroken.  Un- 
biassed attention  to  the  actual  fact  cannot  fail 
to  convince  us  that  what  we  know  directly 
changes  as  a  process  and  not  by  a  series  of 
stages. 

The  creativeness  of  this  process  is  perhaps 
at  first  not  quite  so  obvious,  but  if  we  look 
into  the  fact  once  more,  with  the  object  of 
observing  repetitions  in  it,  we  realize  that  we 
cannot  find  any.  It  is  true  that  you  can  pick 
out  qualities  which  at  first  appear  to  recur  : 
you  may,  for  example,  see  a  rose  and  then  a 
strawberry  ice  cream,  and  3'ou  may  be  inclined 
to  say  that  here  you  saw  the  quality  pink 
twice  over.  But  you  can  only  say  that  what 
you  saw  was  the  same  both  times  by  abstract- 
ing what  we  call  the  colour  from  the  whole 
context  in  which  it  actually  appeared  on  the 
two  different  occasions.  In  reality  the  colour 
is  not  known  in  isolation  :  it  has  its  place,  in 
the  whole  changing  fact  in  a  particular  context 
which  you  may  describe  in  abstract  terms  as 
consisting  of  the  shape  and  smell  and  size  of 
68 


FACT 

tlu;  object   tiitM'tlicr  with   all   tip'   rest   of  yur 
state  of  mind  at  the  nioiiicnt,  which  were  not 
the    same    on    the    two    different    occasions, 
while  further  this  pink  colour  was  modified 
on  each  occasion  by  its  position  in  the  whole 
changing  fact  which  may  again  be  described 
in    abstract    terms    by    saying,    for    instance, 
that  the  pink  on  the  occasion  of  your  seeing 
the  strawberry  ice  cream,  coming  after  the  pink 
on  the  occasion  of  your  seeing  the  rose,  had  a 
peculiar  flavour  of  "  seen  before  "  which  was 
absent     on     the     previous     occasion.     Thus 
although,  by  isolating  "  parts  "  of  the  whole 
process  of  changing  which  you  know  directly, 
you  may  bring  yourself  for  a  moment  to  sup- 
pose that  you  are  acquainted  with  repetitions, 
when  you  look  at  the  whole  fact  as  it  actually 
is,  you  see  that  what  you  know  is  never  the 
same  twice  over,   and   that   your  direct   ex- 
perience forms,  not  a  series  of  repetitions,  but 
a  creative  process. 

But,  once  you  grant  that  the  fact  which  you 
know  directly  really  changes,  there  is,  accord- 
ing to  Bergson,  no  getting  away  from  the  con- 
clusion that  it  must  form  a  creative  process  of 
duration.  For  he  thinks  that  creative  dura- 
tion is  the  only  possible  way  in  which  the 
transition  between  past  and  present,  which 
is  the  essential  feature  of  change  and  time, 
could  be  accomplished  :  all  passing  from  past 
to  present,  all  change,  therefore,  and  all  time, 
must,    he   says,    form    a    creative    process   of 

()0 


TllK    MISUSE    C)l'     MIND 

duration.  The  alternative  is  to  supjjose  that 
time  and  change  form  logical  series  of  events 
in  temporal  relations  of  before  and  after, 
but,  according  to  Bcrgson,  this  not  only  leaves 
out  the  transition  altogether  but  is,  even  as 
it  stands,  unintelligible.  The  argument  is 
this. 

If  time  and  change  are  real,  then,  when  the 
present  is,  the  past  simply  is  not.  But  it  is 
impossible  to  see  how,  in  that  case,  there  can 
be  any  relation  between  past  and  present,  for  a 
relation  requires  at  least  two  terms  in  between 
which  it  holds,  while  in  this  case  there  could 
never  be  more  than  one  term,  the  present, 
ipso  Jado,  abolishing  the  past.  If,  on  the 
other  hand,  the  past  is  preserved,  distinct 
from  the  present,  then  temporal  relations  can 
indeed  hold  between  them,  but  in  that  case 
there  is  no  real  change  nor  time  at  all. 

This  dilemma  all  follows,  of  course,  from 
regarding  "  past  "  and  "  present  "  as  mutually 
exclusive  and  distinct,  and  requiring  to  be 
united  by  external  relations,  in  short  as  terms 
in  a  logical  series  :  for  Bergson  himself  this 
difficulty  simply  does  not  arise  since  he 
denies  that,  within  the  actual  changing  fact 
directly  known,  there  are  any  clear  cut  logical 
distinctions  such  as  the  woVds  "  past  "  and 
"  present  "  imply.  But  when  it  comes  to 
describing  this  changing  fact  distinct  terms 
have  to  be  employed  because  there  are  no 
others,  and  this  creates  pseudo-problems  such 
70 


I'ACT 

as  this  qucstinn  ol  Imw,  .issuiniii.L;  p.isl  .iiwl 
present  to  be  (li^liinl,  tlic  t  lansil  inn  hctwirii 
them  ever  can  be  cllrttrcb  I  he  real  aiiswii 
is  that  the  transition  never  is  elTectcd  because 
past  and  present  are,  in  fact,  not  distinct. 

According  to  Bergson  a  very  large  i)rop()r- 
tion  of  the  problems  over  which  i-)hiIosophers 
have  been  accustoiried  to  dis]>ute  have  really 
been  pseudo-problems  simply  arising  out  of 
this  confusion  between  facts  and  the  abstrac- 
tions by  which  we  describe  them.  When 
once  we  have;  reali/.ed  how  they  arise  these 
pseudo-problems  no  longer  present  any  diffi- 
culties ;  they  are  in  fact  no  longer  problems 
at  all,  they  melt  away  and  cease  to  interest  us. 
If  Bergson,  is  right  this  would  go  far  to  explain 
the  suspicion  wliich,  in  spite  of  the  prestige  of 
phiIosoi)hy,  still  half  unconsciously  colours 
the  feeling  of  the  "  plain  man  "  for  the  "  in- 
tellectual," and  which  even  haunts  the  philoso- 
pher himself,  in  moments  of  discouragement, 
the  suspicion  that  the  whole  thing  is  trivial, 
a  dispute  about  words  of  no  real  importance 
or  dignity.  If  Bergson  is  right  this  suspicion 
is,  in  many  cases,  all  too  well  founded  :  the 
discussion  of  pseudo-problems  is  not  worth 
while.  But  then  the  discussion  of  pseudo- 
problems  is  not  real  philosophy  :  the  thinker 
who  allows  himself  to  be  entangled  in  pseudo- 
problems  has  lost  liis  way. 

In  this,  howevi-r,  the  "  intellectuals  "  are 
not  the  only  ones  at  fault.     "  Plain  men  "  are 

71 


THE    MISUSE    01''    MIND 

misled  by  abstractions  about  facts  just  as 
much,  only  being  less  thorough,  their  mistake 
has  less  effect  :  at  the  expense  of  a  little  logical 
looseness  their  natural  sense  of  fact  saves  them 
from  all  the  absurdities  which  follow  from 
their  false  assumptions.  For  the  "  intel- 
lectual "  there  is  not  this  loophole  through 
which  the  sense  of  fact  may  undo  some  of 
the  work  of  false  assumptions  :  the  "  intel- 
lectual "  follows  out  ruthlessly  the  implica- 
tions of  his  original  assumptions  and  if  these 
are  false  his  very  virtues  lead  him  into  greater 
absurdities  than  those  committed  by  "  plain 
men." 

One  of  the  most  important  tasks  of  phil- 
osophy is  to  show  up  the  pseudo-problems  so 
that  they  may  no  longer  waste  our  time  and 
we  may  be  free  to  pursue  the  real  aim  of 
philosophy  which  is  the  reconquest  of  the 
field  of  virtual  knowledge.  Getting  rid  of  the 
pseudo-problems,  however,  is  no  easy  task  : 
we  may  realize,  for  example,  that  the  difficulty 
of  seeing  how  the  transition  between  past  and 
present  ever  can  be  effected  is  a  pseudo- 
problem  because  in  fact  past  and  present  are 
not  distinct  and  so  no  transition  between  them 
is  needed.  But  since  we  have  constantly  to 
be  using  words  which  carry  the  implication 
of  distinctness  we  are  constantly  liable  to 
forget  tfiis  simple  answer  when  new  problems, 
though  in  fact  they  all  spring  from  tiiis 
fundamental  discrepancy  between  facts  and 

7^ 


tlio  absdarlions  iiy  \\lii(  li  \\i-  dcscriljc  tln'iii, 
])irs('iil  tilt  insi  1\  (  s  ill  suiiic  sli.^litly  'lillrrcnl 
form. 

Tlic    notidii    ot    (Imation    as    consisting    of 
"  parts  "  united  by  "  creative  synthesis  "  is  a 
device,  not  for  explaining  liow  the  transition 
from  past  to  present  really  takes  j)lace  (this 
does  not  need  explaining  since,  "  past  "  and 
"  present  "  being  mere  alistraetions,  no  transi- 
tion between  them  actually  takes  place  at  all), 
but  for  enabling  us  to  emjiloy  the  abstractions 
"  past  "   and   "  j)res(!nt  "   without   constantly 
being  taken  in  by  their  logical  implications. 
The  notion  of  "  creative  synthesis  "  as  what 
joins  "  past  "  and  "  })resent  "  in  a  process  of 
duration  is  an  antidote  to  the  logical  implica- 
tions of  these   two  distinct   terms  :    creative 
synthesis,     unlike    logical    relations,    is    not 
external    to    the    "  ])arts  "    which    it    joins  ; 
"  parts  "  united  by  creative  synthesis  are  not 
distinct    and    mutually    exclusive.     Such    a 
n(ition  as  this  of  creative  synthesis  contradicts 
the    logical    implications    contained    in    the 
notion    of    parts.      The    notion    of    "  parts  " 
united   b^?^   "  creati\e   synthesis  "   is   really   a 
hybrid  which  attemjjts   to  combine  the   two 
incom]jatible    notions    of    logical    distinction 
and  duration.     The  result  is  self-contradictory 
and    this    contradiction    acts    as    a    reminder 
warning  us  against  confusing  the  actual  chang- 
ing fact  with  tlie  abstractions  in  terms  of  which 
we  describe  it  and  so  falling  into  the  mistake 


riu:  MISUSE  oi^    mixd 

of  taking  it  for  granted  that  tliis  changing  fact 
must  form  a  series  of  distinct  stages  or  things 
or  events  or  quahties,  whicli  can  he  rc^j^eated 
over  and  over  again. 

At  tlie  same  time  there  is  no  getting  away 
from  the  fact  that  this  changing  fact  lends 
itself  to  classification  and  that  explanations 
in  terms  of  abstractions  really  do  aj^plj'  to  it 
most  successfully.  We  are  therefore  faced 
with  the  necessity  of  finding  some  way  of 
accounting  for  this,  other  than  by  assuming 
that  the  facts  which  we  know  directly  consist 
of  quahties  which  recur  over  and  over  again. 


74 


CHAPTER    III 

MATTER     AND    MEMORY 

We  have  seen  that,  according  to  the  theory 
of  cliange  which  is  fnndamental  for  Bergson's 
pliilusophy,  the  changing  fact  wliich  we  know 
directly  is  described  as  a  process  of  becoming 
which  does  not  contain  parts  nor  admit  of 
repetitions.  On  the  other  hand  this  changing 
fact  certainly  docs  lend  itself  to  analysis 
and  classification  and  explanation  and,  at 
first  sight  at  any  rate,  it  is  natural  to  suppose 
that  whatever  can  be  classified  and  explained 
must  consist  of  qualities,  that  is  distinct  parts 
which  can  be  repeated  on  different  occasions. 
The  problem  for  Bergson,  if  he  is  to  cstabhsh 
his  theory  of  change,  is  to  show  that  the  fact 
that  a  changing  process  can  be  analysed 
and  classified  does  not  necessarily  imply  that 
such  a  process  must  consist  of  distinct  quali- 
ties which  can  be  repeated.  Bergson's  theory 
of  the  relation  of  matter  to  memory  sug- 
gests a  possible  solution  of  this  problem  as  to 
how  it  is  possible  to  analyse  and  so  apply 
general  laws  to  and  explain  duration  :  it 
becomes  necessary,  therefore,  to  give  some 
account  of  this  theory-. 

75 


THE    MISUSE    OE    MIND 

Like  all  other  descriptions  and  explanations, 
such  an  account  must,  of  course,  be  expressed 
in  terms  of  abstractions,  and  so  is  liable 
to  be  misunderstood  unless  the  false  impli- 
cations of  these  abstractions  are  allowed  for 
and  discoimted. 

According    to    Bergson    tlie    only    actual 
reaUty  is  the  changing  fact  itself,  everything 
else  is  abstraction  :    this  reahty  however  is 
not    confined    to    the    fragment    called    "  our 
present  experience  "  which  is  in  the  full  focus 
of  consciousness  and  is  all  that  we  usually 
suppose  ourselves  to  know  directly ;  it  includes 
besides   everything    that    we   are   in   a  sense 
aware  of  but  do  not  pay  attention  to,  together 
with  our  whole  past:  for  Bergson, in  fact, reality 
coincides  with  the  field  of  virtual  knowledge, 
anything  short  of  this  whole  field  is  an  ab- 
straction and  so  falsified.     Even  to  say  "  we 
know  this  fact  "  is  unsatisfactory  as  implying 
ourselves    and    the    fact    as    distinct    things 
united  by  an  external  relation  of  knowing  : 
to  say  "  the  fact  is  different  from  the  abstrac- 
tion   by    which    it    is    explained  "    similarly 
implies  logically  distinct  terms  in  an  external 
relation  of  difference,  and  so  on.     If  Bergson 
is  right   in  claiming  that   the  actual  fact  is 
non-logical    then    obviously    all    attempts    to 
describe  it,  since  they  must  be  expressed  in 
terms   of   abstractions,   will   teem   with   false 
implications  which  must  be  cHscounted  if  the 
description  is  to  convey  the  meaning  intended. 
76 


MATTI'R    ANh    MI.MOK'V 

Rergson's  claim  is  Ihat  if  \\i-  allow  our 
selves  to  attend  to  I  lie  cliaiif^iiig  fact  with 
which  we  are  actually  acquainteti  we  are 
driven  to  a  theory  of  reality  ditlerent  from  the 
theory  of  things  and  relations  accepted  by 
common  sense.  Tlie  two  abstractions  by 
means  of  which  he  attempts  to  express  this 
new  theory  are  matter  and  memory.  In  the 
actual  fact  Bergson  would  hold  that  both 
these  notions  are  combined  by  synthesis  in 
such  a  way  as  no  longer  to  be  distinct,  or 
rather,  for  this  implies  that  they  started 
distinct  and  then  became  merged,  it  would 
perhaps  be  better  to  say  that  these  two  notions 
are  abstractions  from  two  tendencies  which 
are  present  in  the  actual  fact.  In  the 
actual  fact  they  combine  and,  as  it  were, 
counteract  one  another  and  the  result  is 
something  different  from  either  taken  alone, 
but  when  we  abstract  them  we  release  them 
from  each  other's  modifying  influence  and 
the  result  is  an  exaggeration  of  one  or  other 
tendency  which  does  not  really  represent 
anything  which  actually  occurs  but  can  be 
used,  in  combination  with  the  contrary  ex- 
aggeration, to  ex])lain  the  actual  fact  which 
may  be  described  as  being  like  what  would 
result  from  a  combination  of  these  two 
abstractions. 

We  will  take  matter  first. 

Matter,  for  Bergson,  is  an  exaggeration  of 
the  tendency  in  reality,  (that  is  in  the  actual 

77 


Till':     Misrsi'     0|'~     MIND 

changing  fact  directly  Icnowii)  towards  logical 
distinctness,  what  he  calls  "  spatiality."  His 
use  of  the  word  "  matter  "  in  this  sense  is 
again,  perhaps,  Uke  his  use  of  the  word 
"  space,"  rather  misleading.  Actual  reality, 
according  to  him,  is  never  purely  material, 
the  only  purely  material  things  are  abstrac- 
tions, and  these  are  not  real  at  all  but  simply 
fictions.  Bergson  really  means  the  same 
thing  by  "  matter  "  as  by  "  space  "  and  that 
is  simply  mutual  distinctness  of  parts  and 
externality  of  relations,  in  a  word  logical 
complexity.  Matter,  according  to  this  defin- 
ition of  the  word,  has  no  duration  and  so 
cannot  last  through  any  period  of  time  or 
change  :  it  simply  is  in  the  present,  it  does 
not  endure  but  is  perpetually  destroyed  and 
recreated. 

The  complementary  exaggeration  which, 
taken  together  with  matter,  completes  Berg- 
son's  explanation  of  reality,  is  memory.  Just 
as  matter  is  absolute  logical  complexity 
memory  is  absolute  creative  synthesis.  To- 
gether they  constitute  the  hybrid  notion  of 
creative  duration  whose  "  parts  "  inter- 
penetrate which,  according  to  Bergson,  comes 
nearest  to  giving  a  satisfactory  description  of 
the  actual  fact  directly  known  which  is,  for 
him,  the  whole  reality. 

The  best  way  to  accustom  one's  mind  to 
these  two  complementary  exaggerations, 
matter  and  memory,  and  to  see  in  more 
78 


matt1';k>  and  mi.;m()K'y 
detail  the  use  that  Hcrgson  makrs  of  tlum  in 
explaining  the  actual  facts,  will  be  to  examine 
his  theory  of  sensible  perception,  since  it  is 
just  in  the  act  of  sensible  perception  that 
memory  comes  in  contact  with  matter 

Ihe  unsophisticated  view  is  that  in  sensible 
perception  we  become  acquainted  with  things 
which  exist  whether  we  perceive  them  or  not 
and    these    things,    taken    all    together,    are 
conimonly    called    the    material    world      Ac- 
cording   to    Bergson's    theory    also    sensible 
perception  is  direct  acquaintance  with  matter 
Ihe  unsophisticated  view  holds  further   how- 
ever    that    this   material   world    with  'which 
sensible  perception  acquaints  us  is  the  common 
sense  world  of  solid  tables,  green  grass,  anger 
and  other  such  states  and  things  and  qualities, 
but  we  have  already  seen  that  this  common 
sense   world   is   really  itself  only  one  among 
the  various  attempts  which  science  and  com- 
mon sense  are  continually  making  to  explain 
the    facts    m    terms    of    abstractions.     The 
worlds   of  electrons,    vibrations,    forces     and 
so    on,    constructed    by    physics,    are    other 
attempts  to  do  the  same  tiling  and  the  common 
sense  world  of  "  real  "   things  and  qualities 
has  no  more  claim  to  actual  existence  than 
have  any  of  these  scientific  hypotheses.   Berg- 
son  s  matter  is  not  identified  with  any  one 
of  these  constructions,  it  is  that  in  the  facts 
which   they   are   all   attempts   to   explain   in 
terms    of   abstractions,    the    element    in    the 
79  F 


THE    MI  SUSP:    OF    MIND 

facts  upon  which  abstractions  are  based 
and  which  makes  facts  classifiable  and  so 
explicable. 

The  words  by  which  we  describe  and  ex- 
plain the  material  element  in  the  facts  in 
terms  of  series  of  distinct  stages  or  events  in 
external  relations  would  leave  out  change  if 
their  implications  were  followed  out  con- 
sistently, but  it  is  only  a  few  "  intellectuals  " 
who  have  ever  been  able  to  bring  themselves 
to  follow  out  this  implication  to  the  bitter 
end  and  accept  the  conclusion,  however 
absurd.  Since  it  is  obvious  that  the  facts 
do  change  the  usual  way  of  getting  round  the 
difficulty  is  to  say  that  some  of  these  stages 
are  "  past  "  and  some  "  present,"  and  then, 
not  clearly  realizing  that  the  explanations 
we  construct  are  not  really  facts  at  all,  to 
take  it  for  granted  that  a  transition  between 
past  and  present,  though  there  is  no  room 
for  it  in  the  logical  form  of  the  explanation, 
yet  somehow  manages  actually  to  take  place. 
Bergson  agrees  that  change  does  actually 
take  place  but  not  as  a  transition  between 
abstractions  such  as  "  past  "  and  "  present." 
We  think  that  "  past  "  and  "  present  "  must 
be  real  facts  because  we  do  not  realize  clearly 
how  these  notions  have  been  arrived  at. 
Once  we  have  grasped  the  idea  that  these 
notions,  and  indeed  all  clear  concepts,  are 
only  abstractions,  we  see  that  it  is  not  neces- 
sary to  suppose  that  these  abstractions  really 
80 


MATTl':i>:    -WD    Ml' Mom' 

change  at  all.  1 'xl  \\(i,ii  tlio  .tlistractions 
"  the  past  "  and  "  lln'  piv.sini  "  there  is  no 
transition,  and  it  is  the  same  with  events 
and  things  and  quaHties  :  all  these,  being 
nothing  but  convenient  fictions,  stand  out- 
side the  stream  of  actual  fact  which  is  what 
really  changes  and  endures. 

Matter,  then,  is  the  name  which  Bergson 
gives  to  that  element  in  the  fact  upon  which 
the  purely  logical  form  appropriate  to  ab- 
stractions is  based.  The  actual  facts  are 
not  purely  logical  but  neither  are  they  com- 
pletely inter])enetrated  since  they  lend  them- 
selves to  classilication  :  they  tend  to  logical 
form  on  the  one  hand  and  to  complete  inter- 
penetration  on  the  other  without  going  the 
whole  way  in  either  direction.  What  Bergson 
does  in  the  description  of  the  facts  which 
he  offers  is  to  isolate  each  of  these  tendencies 
making  them  into  two  separate  distinct 
abstractions,  one  called  matter  and  the  other 
mind.  Isolated,  what  in  the  actual  fact  was 
blended  becomes  incompatible.  Matter  and 
mind,  the  clear  cut  abstractions,  are  mutually 
contradictory  and  it  becomes  at  once  a  pseudo- 
jn'oblem  to  see  how  they  ever  could  combine 
to  constitute  the  actual  fact. 

The  matter  which  Bergscjji  talks  about, 
being  wliat  would  be  left  of  the  facts  if  memory 
were  abstracted,  has  no  past  :  it  sim})ly  is 
in  the  present  moment.  If  there  is  any 
memory  which  can  retain  previous  moments 
8i 


'iiii':  Misusr-:  oi-   mind 

then  this  nirmoiy  may  compare  these  previous 
moments  with  the  j^rescnt  moment  and  call 
them  the  i)ast  of  matter,  but  in  itself,  apart 
from  memory,  (and  so  isolated  in  a  way  in 
which  this  tendency  in  the  actual  fact  never 
could  be  isolated)  matter  has  no  past. 

Noticing  liow  very  different  the  actual  facts 
which  we  know  directly  are  from  any  of  the 
material  worlds  by  which  we  explain  them, 
each  of  which  lays  claim  to  being  "  the  reality 
with  which  sensible  perception  acquaints  us," 
some  philosophers  have  put  forward  the  view 
that  in  sensible  perception  we  become  ac- 
quainted, not  with  matter  itself,  but  with 
signs  which  stand  for  a  material  world  which 
exists  altogether  outside  perception.  This 
view  Bergson  rejects.  He  says  that  in  sensible 
perception  we  are  not  acquainted  with  mere 
signs  but,  in  so  far  as  there  is  any  matter  at 
all,  what  we  know  in  sensible  perception  is 
that  matter  itself.  The  facts  which  we  know 
directly  are  matter  itself  and  would  be  nothing 
but  matter  if  they  were  instantaneous.  For 
Bergson,  however,  an  instantaneous  fact  is 
out  of  the  question  :  every  fact  contains  more 
than  the  mere  matter  presented  at  the  mo- 
ment of  perception.  Facts  are  distinguished 
from  matter  by  lasting  through  a  period  of 
duration,  this  is  what  makes  the  difference 
between  the  actual  fact  and  any  of  the  material 
worlds  in  terms  of  which  we  describe  them  : 
matter,  is,  as  we  have  said,  only  an  abstraction 
82 


MA  I'll'.  R    AND     l\n:M()K"V 

of  one  element  or  tendency  in  the  clKinginf^' 
fact  which  is  the  sole  reality  :  memory  is  the 
complementary  abstraction.  Apart  from  the 
actual  fact  neither  matter  nor  memory  have 
independent  existence.  'J'his  is  where  Berg- 
son  disagrees  with  the  ]ihiloso])hcrs  who 
regard  the  facts  as  signs  of  an  independent 
material  world,  or  as  phenomena  which  mis- 
represent some"thing"in  "itself"  which  is  what 
really  exists  but  M'liich  is  not  known  directly 
but  only  inferred  from  the  phenomena.  Vox: 
Bergson  it  is  the  fact  directly  known  that 
really  exists,  and  matter  and  memory,  solid 
tables,  green  grass,  electrons,  forces,  the 
absolute,  and  all  the  other  abstract  ideas  by 
which  we  explain  it  are  misrepresentations  of 
it,  not  it  of  them. 

Even  Bergson,  however,  does  not  get  away 
from  the  distinction  between  appearance  and 
reahty.  The  fact  is  for  him  the  realit3\  the 
abstraction  the  appearance.  But  then  the 
fact  which  is  the  reality  is  not  the  fact  which 
we  ordinarily  suppose  ourselves  to  know, 
the  little  fragment  which  constitutes  "  our 
experience  at  the  present  moment."  This  is 
itself  an  abstraction  from  the  vastly  wider 
fact  of  our  virtual  knowledge,  and  it  is  this 
wider  licld  of  knowledge  which  is  the  reality. 
Abstraction  involves  falsification  and  so  the 
little  fragment  of  fact  to  which  our  attention 
is  usually  confined  is  not,  as  it  stands,  reality  : 
it  is  appearance.  We  should  only  know 
81 


'I'lII'.    MISUSI-:    OI'     MINI) 

reality  as  it  is  if  we  could  replace  this  fragment 
in  its  proper  context  in  the  whole  field  of 
virtual  knowledge  (or  reality)  where  it  belongs. 
What  we  should  then  know  would  not  be 
appearance  but  reality  itself.  It  is  at  this 
knowledge,  according  to  Bergson,  that  philo- 
sophy aims.  Philosophy  is  a  reversal  of  our 
ordinary  intellectual  habits  :  ordinarily 
thought  progresses  from  abstraction  to  ab- 
straction steadily  getting  further  from  con- 
crete facts  :  according  to  Bergson  the  task 
of  philosophy  should  be  to  put  abstractions 
back  again  into  their  context  so  as  to  obtain 
the  fullest  possible  knowledge  of  actual  fact. 
In  order  to  describe  and  explain  this  fact, 
however,  we  have  to  make  use  of  abstractions. 
Bergson  describes  the  fact  known  directly 
by  sensible  perception  as  a  contraction  of  a 
period  of  the  duration  of  matter  in  which  the 
"past"  states  of  matter  are  preserved  along 
with  the  "  present  "  and  form  a  single  whole 
with  it.  It  is  memory  which  makes  this 
difference  between  matter  and  the  actual 
facts  by  preserving  "  past  "  matter  and  com- 
bining it  with  "  the  present."  A  single  per- 
ceived fact,  however,  does  not  contain 
memories  as  distinct  from  present  material  : 
the  distinction  between  "  past  "  and 
"  present  "  does  not  hold  inside  facts  whose 
duration  forms  a  creative  whole  and  not  a 
logical  series.  Of  course  it  is  incorrect  to 
describe  facts  as  "  containing  past  and  present 
84 


MA 'IT  [•:!>:    AND    MF.MORY 

matter,"  bwi ,  as  we  liavc  ofton  pointed  out, 
misleading  though  their  logical  implications 
are,  we  are  obliged  to  replace  facts  by  ab- 
stractions when   we  want   to  describe  them. 

An  examjile  may  perhaps  convey  what  is 
meant  by  saying  that  a  fact  is  a  contraction 
of  a  period  of  the  duration  of  matter.  Con- 
sider red,  bearing  in  mind  that,  when  we  are 
speaking  of  the  fact  actually  perceived  when 
we  see  red  we  must  discount  the  logical 
implications  of  our  words.  Science  says  that 
red,  the  material,  is  composed  of  immensely 
rapid  vibrations  of  ether  :  red,  the  fact,  we 
know  as  a  simple  colour.  Bergson  accepts 
the  scientific  abstractions  in  terms  of  which 
to  describe  matter,  making  the  reservation 
that,  if  we  are  to  talk  of  matter  as  composed 
of  vibrations,  we  must  not  say  that  these 
vibrations  last  through  a  period  of  time 
or  change  by  themselves,  apart  from  any 
memory  which  retains  and  so  preserves  the 

past  "  vibrations.  If  matter  is  to  be 
thought  of  at  all  as  existing  apart  from  any 
memory  it  must  be  thought  of  as  consisting 
of  a  single  vibration  in  a  perpetual  present 
with  no  past.  We  might  alter  the  description 
and  say  that  this  present  moment  of  matter 
should  be  thought  ot  as  being  perpetually 
destroyed  and  recreated. 

Now  according  to  Bergson  the  red  which 
we  know  directlj'  is  a  period  of  the  vibrations 
of   matter  contracted    by   memory  so   as   to 

^\5 


THE    MISUSE    OF    MIND 

produce  an  actual  perceived  fact.  As  matter 
red  does  not  change,  it  is  absolutely  discrete 
and  complex,  in  a  word,  logical  :  as  fact  it  is 
non-logical  and  forms  a  creative  process  of 
duration.  The  difference  between  matter  and 
the  actual  fact  is  made  by  the  mental  act 
which  holds  matter  as  it  were  in  tension 
through  a  period  of  duration,  when  a  fact  is 
produced,  but  which  would  have  had  to  be 
absent  if  there  had  been  no  fact  but  simply 
present  matter.  Bergson  calls  this  act 
memory  :  memory,  he  says,  turns  matter  into 
fact  by  preserving  its  past  along  with  its 
present.  Without  memory  there  would  be  no 
duration  and  so  no  change  and  no  time. 
Matter,  apart  from  memory  would  have  no 
duration  and  it  is  just  in  this  that  it  is  dis- 
tinguished from  actual  fact. 

It  is,  however,  of  course,  only  by  making 
abstractions  that  we  can  say  what  tilings 
would  be  like  if  something  were  taken  away 
which  actually  is  not  taken  away.  Matter 
never  really  does  exist  without  memory  nor 
memory  without  its  content,  matter :  the 
actual  fact  can  only  be  described  as  a  com- 
bination of  the  two  elements,  but  this  de- 
scription must  not  lead  us  into  supposing 
that  the  abstractions,  matter  and  memory, 
actually  have  independent  existence  apart 
from  the  fact  which  they  explain.  Only  the 
actual  fact  exists  and  it  is  not  really  made  up 
of  two  elements,  matter  and  memory,  but 
86 


MAT'il  Iv     ANM)    Ml'MOlv'Y 

only  descril)ccl  in  trims  of  these  two  al)- 
stractions. 

Bergson's  account  of  pcrcci^tion  differs 
from  the  account  ordinarily  given  in  that 
jXTception  is  not  described  as  a  relation  whicli 
is  supix)sed  to  liold  between  a  su])ject  and  an 
object  :  for  Hergson  there  is  no  "  I,"  distin*  I 
from  what  is  perceived,  standing  to  it  in  a 
relation  of  perception.  For  an  object,  to  be 
perceived  consists,  not  in  being  related  to  a 
perceiver,  but  in  being  combined  in  a  new 
way  witli  other  objects.  If  an  object  is 
combined  by  synthesis  with  other  objects 
then  it  is  perceived  and  so  becomes  a  fact. 
But  there  is  no  mind  over  and  above  the 
objects  which  perceives  them  by  being  related 
to  them,  or  even  by  i)erforming  an  act  of 
synthesis  upon  them.  To  speak  of  "  our  " 
perceiving  objects  is  a  mere  fiction  :  when 
objects  are  combined  by  synthesis  they  be- 
come perce]>tions,  facts,  and  this  is  the  same 
as  saying  that  they  are  minds.  For  Bergson 
a  mind  is  nothing  but  a  synthesis  of  objects. 
This  explains  what  he  means  by  saying  that 
in  direct  knowledge  the  perceiver  is  the  object 
perceived. 

Actually  he  thinks  such  notions  as  tlu;  per- 
ceiver and  the  object  and  the  relation  which 
unites  them,  or  again  matter  and  the  act  of 
synthesis  which  turns  matter  into  fact,  are 
nothing  but  abstractions  :  the  only  thing 
there  really  is  is  siin|)]y  tJie  fart  itself.     These 

^7 


THE    MISUSE    01'     MIND 

abstractions,  however,  do  somehow  apply  to 
the  actual  facts,  and  this  brings  us  back  to 
our  problem  as  to  how  it  is  that  the  actual 
fact,  which  is  in  creative  duration,  lends 
itself  to  classification  :  how  it  is  that  general 
laws  in  terms  of  abstractions  which  can  be 
repeated  over  and  over  again,  can  apply  to 
the  actual  fact  which  does  not  contain 
repetitions  ? 

Facts  lend  themselves  to  explanation  when 
they  are  perceived  as  familiar.  In  this  per- 
ceived familiarity,  which  is  the  basis  of  all 
abstraction,  and  so  of  all  description  and 
explanation,  past  as  well  as  present  is  in- 
volved, the  present  owing  its  familiarity  to 
our  memory  of  past  facts.  The  obvious 
explanation  of  perceived  familiarity,  would 
be,  of  course,  to  say  that  it  results  from  our 
perceiving  similar  qualities  shared  by  past 
and  present  facts,  or  relations  of  similarity 
holding  between  them.  But  Bergson  must 
find  some  other  explanation  than  this  since  he 
denies  that  there  can  be  repetition  in  actual 
facts  directly  known. 

Whenever  there  is  actual  fact  there  is 
memory,  and  memory  creates  duration  which 
excludes  repetition.  Perceived  familiarity 
depends  upon  memory  but  memory,  accord- 
ing to  Bergson,  does  not  work  by  preserving 
a  series  of  repetitions  for  future  reference. 
If  we  say  that  memory  connects  "  the  past 
with  "  the  present  "  we  must  add  that  it 
88 


MN'ni'ls'  AND  MEMORY 
destroys  their  lui^ieal  distinctness.  Hut  of 
course  this  is  i)utting  it  very  badly  :  there 
is  really  n(j  "  logical  distinctness  "  in  the 
actual  fact  for  memory  to  "  destroy  "  :  our 
language  suggests  that  first  there  was 
matter,  forming  a  logical  series  of  distinct 
c)ualities  ri-curring  over  and  over,  and 
then  memory  occurred  and  t(;lescoi)ed  the 
series,  squeezing  "  earlier  "  and  "  later  " 
moments  into  one  another  to  make  a  creative 
duration.  Such  a  view  is  suggested  by  our 
strong  bias  towards  regarding  abstractions  as 
having  independent  existence  apart  from  the 
real  fact  from  which  they  have  been 
abstracted  :  if  we  can  overcome  this  bias 
the  description  will  do  well  enough. 

According  to  Bergson,  as  we  have  just  seen, 
every  actual  fact  must  contain  some  memory 
otherwise  it  would  not  be  a  fact  but  simply 
matter,  since  it  is  an  act  of  memory  that  turns 
matter  into  perceived  fact.  Our  ordinary 
more  or  less  familiar  facts,  however,  contain 
much  more  than  this  bare  minimum.  The 
facts  of  everyday  life  are  perceived  as  familiar 
and  classified  from  a  vast  number  of  points  of 
view.  When  you  look  at  a  cherry  you  recog- 
nise its  colour,  shape,  etc.,  you  know  it  is 
edible,  what  it  would  taste  like,  whether  it  is 
ripe,  and  much  more  besides,  all  at  a  glance. 
All  this  knowledge  depends  on  memory, 
memory  gives  meaning  to  what  we  might  call 
bare  sensation   (which  is  the  same  thing  as 


THE     MISUSE    OF    MIND 

Bergson's  present  matter)  as  opposed  to  the 
full  familiar  fact  actually  experienced.  Now 
the  meaning  is  ordinarily  contained  in  the 
actual  fact  along  with  the  bare  sensation,  not 
as  a  multiplicity  of  memories  distinct  from  the 
bare  sensation,  but,  as  we  put  it,  at  a  glance. 
This  peculiar  flavour  of  a  famihar  fact  can  be 
analysed  out  as  consisting  of  memories  of  this 
or  that  past  experience,  if  we  choose  to  treat  it 
in  that  way,  just  as  a  fact  can  be  analysed  into 
qualities.  According  to  Bergson  this  analysis 
of  the  meaning  of  a  familiar  fact  into  memories 
would  have  the  same  drawbacks  as  the  analysis 
of  a  present  fact  into  quahties  :  it  would  leave 
out  much  of  the  meaning  and  distort  the  rest. 
Bergson  holds  that  wherever  there  is  duration 
the  past  must  be  preserved  since  it  is  just  the 
preservation  of  the  past,  the  creation  of  fact 
by  a  synthesis  of  what,  out  of  synthesis, 
would  be  past  and  present,  which  constitutes 
duration.  The  essential  point  about  mental 
life  is  just  the  performing  of  this  act  of  syn- 
thesis which  makes  duration  :  wherever  there 
is  mental  life  there  is  duration  and  so  wherever 
there  is  mental  life  the  past  is  preserved. 
"  Above  everything,"  Bergson  says,  "  con- 
sciousness signifies  memory.  At  this  moment 
as  I  discuss  with  you  I  pronounce  the  word 
"  discussion."  It  is  clear  that  my  conscious- 
ness grasps  this  word  altogether  ;  if  not  it 
would  not  see  it  as  a  unique  word  and  would 
not  make  sense  of  it.  And  yet  when  I  pro- 
90 


MA'I'll'k'    AND    MJ-lMoin' 

iiDuncc  the  last  syllable:  oi  the  word  the  two 
first  ones  have  already  been  pronounced  ; 
relatively  to  this  one,  which  must  then  be 
called  present,  they  are  past.  But  this  last 
syllable  "  sion  "  was  not  j)ronounced  instan- 
taneously ;  the  time,  however  short,  during 
which  I  was  saying  it,  can  be  spht  up  into 
parts  and  these  parts  are  past,  relatively  to 
the  last  of  them,  and  this  last  one  would  be 
present  if  it  were  not  that  it  too  can  be  further 
split  up  :  so  that,  do  what  j^ou  will,  you 
cannot  draw  any  line  of  demarcation  between 
past  and  present,  and  so  between  memory  and 
consciousness.  Indeed  when  I  pronounce  the 
word  "  discussion  "  I  have  before  my  mind, 
not  only  the  beginning,  tlie  middle  and  the 
end  of  the  word,  but  also  the  preceding  words, 
also  the  whole  of  the  sentence  which  I  have 
already  spoken  ;  if  it  were  not  so  I  should 
have  lost  the  thread  of  my  speech.  Now  if 
the  punctuation  of  the  speech  had  been 
different  my  sentence  might  have  begun 
earher  ;  it  might,  for  instance,  have  contained 
the  previous  sentence  and  my  "  present  " 
would  have  been  still  further  extended  into 
the  past.  Let  us  push  this  reasoning  to  its 
conclusion  :  let  us  suppose  that  my  speech  has 
lasted  for  years,  since  the  first  awakening  of 
my  consciousness,  that  it  has  consisted  of  a 
single  sentence,  and  that  my  consciousness 
has  been  sufficiently  detached  from  the  future, 
sufficiently  disinterested  to  occupy  itself  ex- 


THK    MISUSE    OF    MIND 

clusivoly  in  taking  in  the  meaning  of  the  sen- 
tence :  in  that  case  I  should  not  look  for  any 
explanation  of  the  total  conservation  of  this 
sentence  any  more  than  I  look  for  one  of  tlie 
survival  of  the  first  two  syllables  of  the  word 
"  discussion  "  when  I  pronounce  the  last  one. 
Well,  1  think  that  our  whole  inner  life  is  like  a 
single  sentence,  begun  from  the  first  awakening 
of  consciousness,  a  sentence  scattered  with 
commas,  but  nowhere  broken  by  a  full  stop. 
And  so  I  think  that  our  whole  past  is  there, 
subconscious — I  mean  present  to  us  in  such  a 
way  that  our  consciousness,  to  become  aware 
of  it,  need  not  go  outside  itself  nor  add  any- 
thing foreign  :  to  perceive  clearly  all  that  it 
contains,  or  rather  all  that  it  is,  it  has  only 
to  put  aside  an  obstacle,  to  lift  a  veil.  "* 

If  this  theory  of  memory  be  correct,  the 
occurrence  of  any  present  bare  sensation  itself 
suffices  to  recall,  in  some  sense,  the  whole  past. 
But  this  is  no  use  for  practical  purposes,  just 
as  the  whole  of  the  fact  given  in  present  per- 
ception is  useless  for  practical  purposes  until 
it  has  been  analysed  into  qualities.  According 
to  Bergson  we  treat  the  material  supplied  by 
memory  in  much  the  same  way  as  that  supplied 
by  perception.  The  whole  field  of  the  past 
which  the  present  calls  up  is  much  wider  than 
what  we  actually  remember  clearly  :  what 
we  actually  remember  is  arrived  at  by  ignoring 
all  the  past  except  such  scraps  as  appear  to 

•  L'Energie  SpiritueUe — "  L'Ame  et  le  Corps."  pages  59  and  60. 
92 


MATTl'I^;     AND    MRMOl-JV 

form  useful  jiroct-flcnts  for  hi  ln\  ioiii'  in  thr 
])rosent  situation  in  wliich  we  IukI  ouisclvcs. 
Perhaps  this  explains  why  sometimes,  at  the 
point  of  (leatli,  when  useful  beha\'iour  is  no 
longer  possible,  this  selection  breaks  clown 
and  the  whole  of  the  past  floods  back  into 
memory.  The  brain,  according  to  Bergson, 
is  the  organ  whose  function  it  is  to  perform 
this  necessary  work  of  selection  out  of  the 
whole  field  of  virtual  memory  of  practically 
useful  fragments,  and  so  long  as  the  brain  is 
in  order,  only  these  are  allowed  to  come 
through  into  consciousness  as  clear  memories. 
The  passage  just  quoted  goes  on  to  speak  of 
"  the  part  played  by  the  brain  in  memory." 
"  Tlie  brain  does  not  serve  to  preserve  the  past 
but  primarily  to  obscure  it,  and  then  to  let  just 
so  much  as  is  practically  useful  slip  througli." 
But  the  setting  of  the  whole  past,  though 
it  is  ignored  for  convenience,  still  makes  itself 
felt  in  tlie  pecuHar  qualitative  flavour  which 
belongs  to  every  present  fact  by  reason  of  its 
past.  Even  in  the  case  of  familiar  facts  this 
flavour  is  no  mere  repetition  but  is  perpetually 
modified  as  the  familiarity  increases,  and  it  is 
just  in  this  j:)rogressively  changing  flavour 
that  their  familiarity  consists. 

An  inspection  of  what  we  know  directly, 
then,  does  not  bear  out  the  common  sense 
theory  that  perceived  familiarity,  upon  wliich 
abstraction  and  all  description  and  explana- 
tion are  based,  consists  in  the  perception  of 

93 


TFIK    MISUSE    OF    MINM) 

similar  qualities  shared  by  present  matter  and 
the  matter  retained  by  memory.  A  famihar 
fact  appears  to  be,  not  a  repetition,  but  a  nezc^ 
fact.  This  new  fact  may  be  described  as 
containing  present  and  past  Ijare  sensations, 
but  it  must  be  added  that  these  bare  sensations 
do  not  remain  distinct  things  but  are  synthe- 
sised  by  the  act  of  perception  into  a  fresh 
whole  which  is  not  the  sum  of  the  bare  sensa- 
tions which  it  may  be  described  as  containing. 
Such  a  perceived  whole  will  be  familiar,  and 
so  lend  itself  to  abstraction  and  explanation, 
in  so  far  as  the  present  bare  sensation  which 
it  contains,  taken  as  mere  matter  (that  is  apart 
from  the  act  of  perception  which  turns  it  from 
mere  matter  into  actual  fact),  would  have 
been  a  repetition  of  some  of  the  past  bare 
sensations  which  go  to  form  its  meaning  and 
combine  with  it  to  create  the  fact  actually 
known.  For  bare  sensation  now  may  be  a 
repetition  of  past  bare  sensation  though  the 
full  fact  will  always  be  something  fresh,  its 
flavour  changing  as  it  grows  more  and  more 
familiar  by  taking  up  into  itself  more  and 
more  bare  sensation  which,  taken  in  abstraction 
apart  from  the  act  of  synthesis  which  turns 
it  into  actual  fact,  would  be  repetitions.  To 
take  the  example  which  we  have  already  used 
of  perceiving  first  a  rose  and  then  a  strawberry 
ice  cream  :  let  us  suppose  that  the  rose  was 
the  very  first  occasion  on  which  you  saw  pink. 
The  perceived  fact  on  that  occasion  would, 

94 


MATTICI-J     AND     MliMOKY 

like  all  perceived  facts,  hr  a  combination  of 
past  and  present  bare  scnsaticjns.  It  wonld 
not  be  familiar  because  the  elements  of  i)resent 
bare  sensation  would  not  be  repetitions  of  the 
elements  of  past  bare  sensation  (always  assum- 
ing, as  we  must  for  purposes  of  explanation, 
that  past  and  present  bare  sensations  ever 
could  be  isolated  from  the  actual  fact  and  still 
both  exist,  which,  however,  is  not  possible). 
But  when  you  saw  the  strawberry  ice  cream 
tlie  past  perceived  rose  would  be  among  the 
memories  added  to  this  bare  sensation  which 
constitute  its  meaning  and,  by  forming  a 
s\mthesis  with  it,  turn  it  from  mere  matter  into 
fact.  The  pink  would  now  be  perceived  as 
familiar  because  the  pink  of  tlie  rose  (which 
as  bare  sensation  is  similar  to  the  bare  sensa- 
tion of  strawberry-ice-cream-pink)  would  be 
included,  along  with  tlie  present  bare  sensation 
of  pink,  in  the  whole  fact  of  the  perception  of 
strawljerry  ice  cream. 

Perceived  fact,  then,  combines  meaning 
and  present  bare  sensation  to  form  a  whole 
with  a  qualitative  flavour  which  is  itself  always 
unique,  but  which  lends  itself  to  abstraction 
in  so  far  as  the  bare  sensations,  past  and 
present,  which  go  to  produce  it,  would,  as 
matter  in  isolation,  be  repetitions. 

This  qualitative  flavour,  however,  is,  of 
course,  not  a  quality  in  tlie  logical  sense  which 
implies  distinctness  and  externality  of  rela- 
tions.    Facts   have   logical   qualities   only   if 

95  ^ 


'iin-:  MISUSE  OF  mind 

they  are  taken  in  abstraction  isolated  from 
their  context.  This  is  not  how  fact  actually 
occurs.  Iwery  fact  occurs  in  the  course  of 
the  duration  of  some  mental  life  which  itself 
changes  as  a  process  of  duration  and  not  as  a 
logical  series.  The  mental  life  of  an  indi- 
vidual is,  as  it  were,  a  comprehensive  fact 
which  embraces  all  the  facts  directly  known  to 
that  individual  in  a  single  process  of  creative 
duration.  Facts  are  to  the  mental  life  of  an 
individual  what  bare  sensation  is  to  the  actual 
fact  directly  known  in  perception  :  facts  are, 
as  it  were,  the  matter  of  mental  life.  Imagine 
a  fact  directly  known,  such  as  we  have 
described  in  discussing  sensible  perception, 
lasting  on  and  on,  perpetually  taking  up  new 
bare  sensations  and  complicating  them  with 
meaning  which  consists  of  all  the  past  which 
it  already  contains  so  as  to  make  out  of  this 
combination  of  past  and  present  fresh  fact, 
that  will  give  you  some  idea  of  the  way  in 
which  Bergson  thinks  that  mental  hfe  is 
created  out  of  matter  by  memory.  Only  this 
description  is  still  unsatisfactory  because  it  is 
obliged  to  speak  of  what  is  created  either  in 
the  plural  or  in  the  singular  and  so  fails  to 
convey  either  the  differentiation  contained  in 
mental  life  or  else  its  unbroken  continuity 
as  all  one  fact  progressively  modified  by 
absorbing  more  and  more  matter. 

If  Bergson 's  account  of  the  way  in  which 
memory  works  is  true  there  is  a  sense  in  which 
96 


MATTi'.Iv'     AND     MI'MOTv'Y 

the  wliolc  past  of  every  iiidividuiil  is  prescrvi-d 
in  mcinory.  and  all  unites  with  any  present 
bare  sensation  to  constitute  the  fact  din^ctly 
known  to  him  at  any  given  moment.  If  the 
continuity  of  duration  is  really  imbroken  there 
is  no  possibility  of  any  of  the  jiast  being  lost. 
This  is  why  Bergson  maintains  that  the 
whole  of  our  past  is  contained  in  our  virtual 
knowledge  :  what  he  means  by  our  virtual 
knowledge  is  simply  everything  which  enters 
into  the  process  of  duration  which  constitutes 
our  whole  mental  life.  Besides  our  whole 
past  this  virtual  knowledge  must  also  contain 
much  more  of  present  bare  sensation  than  we 
are  usually  aware  of. 

We  said  that,  for  Bergson,  actual  fact  directly 
known  was  the  only  reality  ;  this  actual  fact, 
however,  does  not  mean  merely  what  is  present 
to  the  perception  of  a  given  individual  at  any 
given  moment,  but  the  whole  of  our  virtual 
knowledge.  The  field  of  virtual  knowledge 
would  cover  much  the  same  region  as  the 
subconscious,  which  plays  such  an  important 
part  in  modern  psychology.  The  limits  of  this 
field  are  impossible  to  determine.  Once  you 
give  up  hmiting  direct  knowledge  to  the  fact 
actually  present  in  perception  at  any  given 
moment  it  is  difficult  to  draw  the  line  any- 
where. And  yet  to  draw  the  line  at  the  pre- 
sent moment  is  impossible  for  "  the  j^resent 
moment  "  is  clearly  an  abstract  fiction.  For 
practical  purposes  "  the  })resent  "  is  what  is 

97 


'Illl';    MISl'SI';    OI-     MINM) 

known  as  "  the  specious  present,"  which 
covers  a  certain  ill-defined  period  of  duration 
from  whicli  the  instantaneous  "  present 
moment  "  is  recognised  to  be  a  mere  abstrac- 
tion. According  to  Bergson,  however,  just 
as  "  the  present  moment  "  is  only  an  abstrac- 
tion from  a  wider  specious  present  so  this 
specious  present  itself  is  an  abstraction  from  a 
continuous  process  of  duration  from  which 
other  abstractions,  days,  weeks,  years,  can 
be  made,  but  which  is  actually  unbroken  and 
forms  a  single  continuous  changing  whole. 
And  just  as  facts  are  only  abstractions  from 
the  whole  mental  life  of  an  individual  so 
individuals  must  be  regarded  as  abstractions 
from  some  more  comprehensive  mental  whole 
and  thus  our  virtual  knowledge  seems  not 
merely  to  extend  over  the  whole  of  what  is 
embraced  by  our  individual  acts  of  perception 
and  preserved  by  our  individual  memories  but 
overflows  even  these  limits  and  must  be 
regarded  as  co-extensive  with  the  duration 
of  the  whole  of  reality. 

It  may  be  open  to  question  how  much  of 
this  virtual  knowledge  of  both  past  and 
present  we  ever  could  know  directly  in  any 
sense  comparable  to  the  way  in  which  we 
know  the  fact  actually  presented  at  some  given 
moment,  however  perfectly  we  might  succeed 
in  ridding  ourselves  with  our  intellectual 
pre-occupation  with  explaining  instead  of 
knowing;  but,  if  reality  forms  an  unbroken 
98 


IMAT'IF-R     AND    MI'MOl^V 

wliole  in  duration,  we  cainiot  in  advance  set 
any  limits,  short  of  the  wliole  of  reality,  to  tlie 
field  of  virtual  knowledge.  And  it  does  really 
seem  as  if  our  pre-occupation  with  discovering 
repetitions  in  the  interests  of  explanation  had 
something  to  do  with  the  limited  extent  of  the 
direct  knowledge  which  we  ordinarily  enjoy, 
so  that,  if  we  could  overcome  this  bias,  we 
might  know  more  than  we  do  now,  though 
how  much  more  it  is  not  possible,  in  advance, 
to  predict.  For  in  the  whole  field  of  virtual 
knowledge,  which  appears  to  be  continuous 
with  the  little  scrap  of  fact  which  is  all  that 
we  usually  attend  to,  present  bare  sensation 
and  such  bare  sensations  as  resemble  it,  form 
very  insignificant  elements  :  for  purposes  of 
abstraction  and  explanation,  however,  it  is 
only  these  insignificant  elements  that  are  of 
any  use.  So  long,  therefore,  as  we  are  pre- 
occupied with  abstraction,  we  must  bend  all 
our  energies  towards  isolating  these  fragments 
from  the  context  which  extends  out  and  out 
over  the  whole  field  of  virtual  knowledge, 
rivetting  our  attention  on  them  and,  as  far 
as  possible,  ignoring  all  the  rest.  If  Bergson's 
theory  of  virtual  knowledge  is  correct,  then, 
it  does  seem  as  if  normally  our  efforts  were 
directed  towards  shutting  out  most  of  our 
knowledge  rather  than  towards  enjoying  it, 
towards  forgetting  the  greater  part  of  what 
memory  contains  rather  than  towards  remem- 
bering it. 

99 


THE    MISUSE    OF    MIND 

If  wo  really  could  reverse  this  effort  and 
concentrate  upon  knowing  the  whole  field  of 
past  and  present  as  fully  as  possible,  instead 
of  classifying  it,  which  involves  selecting  part 
of  the  field  and  ignoring  the  rest,  it  is  theoret- 
ically conceivable  that  we  might  succeed  in 
knowing  directly  the  whole  of  the  process  of 
duration  which  constitutes  the  individual 
mental  Ufe  of  each  one  of  us.  And  it  is  not 
even  certain  that  our  knowledge  must  neces- 
sarily be  confined  within  the  limits  of  what 
we  have  called  our  individual  mental  Ufe. 
Particular  facts,  as  we  have  seen,  are  not 
really  distinct  parts  of  a  single  individual 
mental  life  :  the  notion  of  separateness  applies 
only  to  abstractions  and  it  is  only  because 
we  are  much  more  pre-occupied  with  abstrac- 
tions than  with  actual  facts  that  we  come  to 
suppose  that  facts  can  ever  really  be  separate 
from  one  another.  When  we  shake  off  our 
common  sense  assumptions  and  examine  the 
actual  facts  which  we  know  directly  we  find 
that  they  form  a  process  and  not  a  logical 
series  of  distinct  facts  one  after  the  other. 
Now  on  analogy  it  seems  possible  that  what 
we  call  individual  mental  lives  are,  to  the 
wider  process  which  contains  and  constitutes 
the  whole  of  reahty,  as  particular  facts  are  to 
the  whole  process  which  constitutes  each 
individual  mental  life.  The  whole  of  reahty 
may  contain  individual  lives  as  these  contain 
particular  facts,  not  as  separate  distinct  units 


mattI':r   and   mi:m()I>;y 

in  lngic;i.l  rel.itions,  l)ul  as  a  pidccss  in  wiiirli 
the  line  of  demarcation  in:tw(.rn  "  the  pans  " 
(if  we  must  sjieak  (if  "  i>ai'ts  ")  is  not  clear  cut. 
If  this  analogy  liolils  then  it  is  im])ossible  in 
advance  to  set  any  limits  to  the  held  of  direct 
knmvledge  which  it  may  be  in  our  power  to 
secure  by  reversing  our  usual  mental  attitude 
anci  devoting  our  energies  simjjly  to  knowing, 
instead  of  to  classifying  and  explaining. 

But  without  going  beyond  the  limits  of  our 
individual  experience,  and  even  without  com- 
ing to  know  directly  the  whole  field  of  past 
and  present  fact  which  that  experience  con- 
tains, it  is  still  a  considerable  gain  to  our 
direct  knowledge  if  we  realize  what  false 
assumptions  our  preoccu])ation  with  classih- 
cation  leads  us  to  make  even  about  the  very 
limited  facts  to  which  our  direct  knowledge 
is  ordinarily  confined.  We  then  realize  that, 
besides  being  considerably  less  than  what  we 
l)robably  have  it  in  our  power  to  know,  these 
few  facts  that  we  do  know  are  themselves  by- 
no  means  what  we  commonly  suppose  them 
to  be. 

The  two  fundamental  errors  into  which 
common  sense  leads  us  about  the  facts  are  the 
assumptions  that  they  have  the  logical  form, 
that  is  contain  mutually  exclusive  parts  in 
external  relations,  and  that  these  j)arts  can 
be  repeated  over  and  over  again.  These  two 
false  assumptions  are  summed  u])  in  the 
common  sense  \iew   that   the  fact   which  we 


THE    MISUSE    OF    I\1IND 

know  directly  actually  consists  of  events, 
things,  states,  qualities.  Bergson  tells  us 
that  when  once  we  have  realized  that  this  is 
not  the  case  we  have  begun  to  be  philosophers. 

Having  stripped  the  veil  of  common  sense 
assumptions  from  what  we  know  directly  our 
task  will  then  be  to  hold  this  direct  know- 
ledge before  us  so  as  to  know  as  much 
as  possible.  The  act  by  which  we  know 
directly  is  the  very  same  act  by  which  we 
perceive  and  remember ;  these  are  all  simply 
acts  of  synthesis,  efforts  to  turn  matter  into 
creative  duration.  What  we  have  to  do  is, 
as  it  were,  to  make  a  big  act  of  perception 
to  embrace  as  wild  a  field  as  possible  of  past 
and  present  as  a  single  fact  directly  known. 
This  act  of  synthesis  Bergson  calls  "  intuition." 

Intuition  may  be  described  as  turning  past 
and  present  into  fact  directly  known  by 
transforming  it  from  mere  matter  into  a 
creative  process  of  duration  :  but,  of  course, 
actually,  there  is  not,  first  matter,  then  an 
act  of  intuition  which  synthesises  it,  and 
finally  a  fact  in  duration,  there  is  simply  the 
duration,  and  the  matter  and  the  act  of 
intuition  are  only  abstractions  by  which  we 
describe  and  explain  it. 

The  effort  of  intuition  is  tlie  reversal  of 
the  intellectual  effort  to  abstract  and  explain 
which  is  our  usual  way  of  treating  facts,  and 
these  two  ways  of  attending  are  incompatible 
and    cannot    both    be    carried    on    together. 


5 


MAI'MK     .\N'1»     MI'Mom' 

The  matter  and  flir  .k  1  of  in. moiy  arc  Ixitli 
abstractions  from  the  actual  lact  :  lie  docs 
not  mean  that  o\'cr  and  al:)ove  the  fact  there 
is  either  any  matter  or  any  force  or  activity 
called  memory  nor  are  these  things  supposed 
to  be  in  the  actual  fact  :  they  are  simply 
abstract  terms  in  which  the  fact  is  described. 

Bergson  tries  elsewhere  to  put  the  same 
point  by  saying  that  there  are  two  tendencies 
in  reality,  one  towards  space  (that  is  logical 
form)  and  the  other  towards  duration,  and 
that  the  actual  fact  which  we  know  directly 
"  tends  "  now  towards  "  space  "  and  now 
towards  duration.  The  two  faculties  in- 
tellect and  intuition  are  likewise  fictions 
which  are  not  really  supposed  to  exist,  distinct 
from  the  fact  to  which  they  are  ajjplied,  but 
are  simply  abstract  notions  invented  for  the 
sake  of  description. 

Whatever  the  description  by  which  a  phil- 
osopher attempts  to  convey  what  he  has 
discovered  we  shall  only  understand  it  if 
we  remember  that  the  terms  in  which  the 
fact  is  described  are  not  actually  parts  of 
the  fact  itself  and  can  only  convey  the  mean- 
ing intended  if  they  are  grasped  by  synthesis 
and  not  intellectually  understood. 


PRTNTEl)    IN    <,KKAT     IIRITAIN    FY    THE     nKVuNSHIRK    PRESS.     TORQUAY 


THE    MISUSE    OF    MIND 

whole  of  duration.  It  is  something,  how- 
ever, to  be  aware  of  tlie  flaw,  even  if  we  cannot 
wholly  remedy  it,  and  the  wider  the  acquaint- 
ance the  less  is  the  imperfection  in  the  fact 
known. 

The  first  step,  in  any  case,  towards  obtain- 
ing the  wider  acquaintance  at  which  philosophy 
aims  consists  in  making  the  effort  necessary  to 
rid  ourselves  of  the  practical  preoccupation 
which  gives  us  our  bias  towards  explain- 
ing everything  long  before  we  have  allowed 
ourselves  time  to  pay  proper  attention  to  it, 
in  order  that  we  may  at  least  get  back  to 
such  actual  facts  as  we  do  already  know 
directly.  When  this  has  been  accomplished 
(and  our  intellectual  habits  are  so  deeply 
ingrained  that  the  task  is  by  no  means  easy) 
we  can  then  go  on  to  other  philosophers' 
descriptions  of  the  facts  with  which  their 
own  efforts  to  widen  their  direct  knowledge 
have  acquainted  them  and,  by  sjoithesising 
the  general  terms  which  they  have  been 
obliged  to  employ,  we  also  may  come  to  know 
these  more  comprehensive  facts.  Unless  it 
is  understood  synthetically,  however,  a  phil- 
osopher's description  of  the  facts  with  which 
he  has  acquainted  himself  will  be  altogether 
unsatisfactory  and  misleading.  It  is  in  this 
way  that  Bergson's  own  analysis  of  the  fact 
which  we  all  know  directly  into  matter  and 
the  act  of  memory  by  which  matter  is  turned 
into  a  creative  process  should  be  understood. 
io6 


MATTKK    AM)    MFiMORY 

of  acqnaintanco  rrealing,  if  jiossibk',  a  fact 
wider  and  fuller  than  the  facts  which  wc  are 
content  to  know  for  the  purposes  of  everyday 
Hfe.  But  analysis  is  essential  if  the  fact 
thus  directly  known  is  to  be  conveyed  to 
others  and  recalled.  By  analysis  the  philoso- 
pher fixes  this  wider  field  in  order  that  lie 
may  communicate  and  recall  it.  Starting 
later  from  the  description  of  some  fact  ob- 
tained by  a  previous  effort  of  acquaintance, 
or  from  several  facts  obtained  at  different 
times,  and  also  from  the  facts  described  by 
others,  and  using  all  these  descriptions  as 
material,  it  may  be  possible,  by  a  fresh  effort, 
to  perform  acts  of  acquaintance,  (or  synthe- 
sis) embracing  ever  wider  and  wider  fields  of 
knowledge.  This,  according  to  Bcrgson,  is 
the  way  in  which  philosophical  knowledge 
should  be  built  up,  facts,  obtained  by  acts 
of  acquaintance,  being  translated  into  de- 
scriptions only  that  these  descriptions  may 
again  be  further  synthesised  so  directing  our 
attention  to  more  and  more  comprehensive 
facts. 

Inevitably,  of  course,  these  facts  them- 
selves, being  less  than  all  the  stream  of 
creative  duration  to  which  they  belong,  will 
be  abstractions,  if  taken  apart  from  that 
whole  stream,  and  so  distorted.  This  flaw 
in  what  we  know  even  by  direct  acquaintance 
can  never  be  wholly  remedied  sliort  of  our 
succeeding  in  becoming  acquainted  with  the 

105 


THE    MISUSE    OF    MIND 

only  stand  for  repetitions  and  have  tiic 
logical  form.  It  looks,  therefore,  as  if  our 
descriptions  could  not,  as  they  stand,  be  very 
successful  in  conveying  to  others  the  fact 
known  to  us  directly,  or  in  recalling  it  to  our- 
selves. 

In  order  that  the  description  substituted 
by  our  intellectual  activity  for  the  facts  which 
we  want  to  describe  may  convey  these  facts 
it  is  necessary  to  perform  an  act  of  synthesis 
on  the  description  analogous  to  the  act  of 
perception  which  originally  created  the  fact 
itself  out  of  mere  matter.  The  words  used  in 
a  description  should  be  to  the  hearer  what 
mere  matter  is  to  the  perceiver  :  in  order  that 
matter  may  be  perceived  an  act  of  synthesis 
must  be  performed  by  which  the  matter  is 
turned  into  fact  in  duration  :  similarly  in  order 
to  gather  what  a  description  of  a  fact  means 
the  hearer  must  take  the  general  terms  which 
are  employed  not  as  being  distinct  and 
mutually  exclusive  but  as  modifying  one 
another  and  interpenetrating  in  the  way  in 
which  tlie  "  parts  "  of  a  process  of  creative 
duration  interpenetrate.  In  the  same  way  by 
understanding  the  terms  employed  synthet- 
ically and  not  intellectually  we  can  use  a 
description  to  recall  any  fact  which  we  have 
once  known  directly.  Thus  our  knowledge 
advances  by  alternate  acts  of  direct  acquaint- 
ance and  analysis. 

Philosophy  must  start  from  a  fresh  effort 
104 


^r.\TTl•l•J   AX'i)  mi-:mc)ky 

Intuition,  (or,  to  i^'ivc  it  a  ni()r(>  fanuliar  name, 
direct  knowledge,)  reveals  fact  :  intellectual 
attention  analyses  and  classifies  this  fact  in 
order  to  explain  it  in  general  ternis,  that  is 
to  explain  it  by  substituting  abstractions  for 
the  actual  fact.  Obviously  we  cannot  per- 
form acts  of  analysis  without  some  fact  to 
serve  as  material  :  analysis  uses  the  facts 
supplied  by  direct  knowledge  as  its  material. 
Bergson  maintains  that  in  so  doing  it  limits 
and  distorts  these  facts  and  he  says  that  if 
we  are  looking  for  speculative  knowledge  we 
must  go  back  to  direct  knowledge,  or,  as  he 
calls  it,   intuition. 

But  bare  acquaintance  is  in-communicable, 
moreover  it  requires  a  great  effort  to  main- 
tain it.  In  order  to  communicate  it  and 
retain  the  power  of  getting  the  facts  back 
again  after  we  have  relaxed  our  grip  on  them 
we  are  obliged,  once  we  have  obtained  the 
fullest  direct  knowledge  of  which  we  are 
capable,  to  apply  the  intellectual  method  to 
the  fact  thus  revealed  and  attempt  to  describe 
it  in  general  terms. 

Now  the  directly  known  forms  a  creative 
duration  whose  special  characteristics  are 
that  it  is  non-logical,  (i.e.,  is  not  made  up  of 
distinct  mutually  exclusive  terms  united  by 
external  relations)  and  does  not  contain  parts 
which  can  be  repeated  over  and  over,  while 
on  the  other  hand  the  terms  which  we  have 
to  substitute  for  it  if  we  want  to  describe  it 

10.3 


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